BX  9225  . P3 7 4  A3  1923 
Parkhurst,  Charles  Henry, 
1842-1933 . 

My  forty  years  in  N ew  York 


MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN 
NEW  YORK 


Digitized  by  the  Internet  Archive 
in  2019  with  funding  from 
Princeton  Theological  Seminary  Library 


https://archive.org/details/myfortyyearsinneOOpark 


33^ .  /"/ \ 


MY  FORTY  YEARS 
IN  NEW  YORK 


BY 

/ 

REVEREND  C.  H.  PARKHURST,  D.D.,  LL.D. 


j Reto  gotfc 

THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

1923 

All  rights  reserved 


Copyright,  1923 

By  THE  MACMILLAN  COMPANY 

Set  up  and  printed.  Published,  October,  1923 


Printed  in  the  United  States  of  America 


A  FOREWORD 


The  tests  applied  to  a  New  York  City  preacher  are 
severe  and  conclusive.  They  all  are  summed  up  in 
whether  he  can  endure  the  place  and  whether  the  place 
will  endure  him.  Can  he  stay?  One  of  the  ablest 
Bishops  of  my  Church  who  served  successfully  two 
terms  in  the  city,  in  what  was  our  most  prominent 
church,  told  me  that  New  York  City  sifted  a  preacher 
as  no  other  place  in  the  world,  and  that  every  year  men 
were  ground  to  dust  between  the  upper  and  nether  mill¬ 
stones  of  the  pulpit.  The  fact  that  a  man  was  invited 
back  to  the  same  pulpit  in  New  York  was  a  vindica¬ 
tion  of  his  powers,  and  that  was  said  when  the  term 
of  service  was  only  five  years.  Dr.  C.  H.  Parkhurst 
remained  more  than  seven  times  that  time,  including 
a  period  of  intense  controversy  and  strife.  Through 
storm  and  calm  his  enemies  never  flattered  themselves 
with  the  thought  that  they  could  substitute  for  him 
another  occupant  of  his  pulpit.  They  brought  to  bear 
upon  him  every  force  possible  but  every  year  saw  him 
victorious  over  his  foes  and  gathering  to  himself  in¬ 
creasing  power.  If  you  were  to  ask  me  what  that 
power  was  I  would  answer  you  with  the  single  word 
"pulpit.” 

Since  the  Apostles  there  have  been  remarkable  pulpit 


VI 


FOREWORD 


demonstrations.  The  pulpit  of  Dr.  C.  H.  Parkhurst 
is  one  of  them.  It  was  not  a  collective  pulpit;  he 
preached  alone,  while  good  men  questioned  the  expe¬ 
diency  and  the  wisdom  of  such  preaching.  Why,  such 
conservatism  at  such  a  time,  when  the  issues  were  as 
moral  as  the  Ten  Commandments  and  their  spiritual¬ 
ized  forms  the  beatitudes  is  amazing!  Politics  was 
prudent;  business  was  cautious;  friends  were  timid; 
the  foe  was  vicious;  the  church  kept  its  sacred  robes 
respectably  out  of  the  mire.  Wise  counsels  talked  a 
misapplication  of  the  wisdom  of  the  serpent  and  left 
the  dove  to  flutter  out  of  his  charms  as  it  could,  or  more 
often,  could  not.  One  pulpit,  fastened  to  a  rock,  built 
into  the  rock,  aimed  its  rifled  gun  against  the  most  con¬ 
spicuous  iniquity  in  the  continent’s  greatest  city.  Dr. 
Parkhurst  preached  the  devil  into  the  light  where  his 
hideous  form  was  revealed,  and  showed  men  that  he 
could  be  conquered  by  preaching.  He  had  been  too 
great  a  devil  for  any  other  force  to  handle.  All  forces 
had  been  conquered  by  him  and  had  joined  with  him, 
and  he  had  derisively  grinned  and  leeringly  flung  out 
the  old  question,  “What  are  you  going  to  do  about 
it?”  And  that  devil  devouring  our  municipal  author¬ 
ity,  corrupting  the  defenders  of  our  homes,  treading 
on  our  virtues,  shaming  us  unutterably  in  the  whole 
civilized  world,  was  preached  to  death  by  the  single- 
handed  and  lone  Presbyterian  preacher  on  Madison 
Square.  He  shot  holes  through  him.  He  captured  his 
minions  and  put  them  on  exhibition  before  the  people. 
He  toyed  with  that  devil’s  champions  of  patronage  and 
made  them  contemptible;  he  penetrated  his  jungle  and 


FOREWORD 


Vll 


lair  and  wrought  dismay  and  consternation  in  that 
devil’s  mightiest  counsels.  To  all  of  their  defense  and 
apologies,  their  threats  and  defamation,  through  the 
press  and  otherwise,  the  preacher  aimed  the  rifled  gun 
of  the  Madison  Square  pulpit  and  aimed  it  straight ! 

Do  you  tell  me  that  the  courts  woke  up  and  great 
lawyers  came  to  the  help  of  the  preacher, — yes,  that  is 
true,  and  no  one  has  more  cheerfully  given  every  credit 
to  them  than  Dr.  Parkhurst.  But  what  he  would  not 
claim,  thousands  now  see;  it  was  the  preacher  who 
aroused  the  courts  from  the  slumbers  and  quickened 
the  public  conscience  and  made  the  logic  of  resistance 
to  the  monster  of  iniquity  an  appeal  of  all  the  people. 

The  pulpit  has  always  been  a  signal  power.  It  is 
measured  by  fearless  application  of  force  when  all  else 
has  failed  and  its  power  has  shot  out  in  tongues  of 
flame.  It  appeared  among  the  prophets  of  old;  it 
counted  not  its  life  dear  to  itself  among  the  Apostles; 
its  enemies  have  been  potent  along  the  peaks  which 
have  lifted  centuries  into  ranges  of  conquest  and 
progress.  It  has  been  a  call  of  God  when  nothing  else 
would  do  the  work,  and  the  work  seemed  too  great  for 
a  voice  and  no  other  voice  would  be  heard.  And  there 
came  the  man;  the  man  who  heard  nothing  but  that 
voice.  Prudence  was  against  it;  taste,  comfort,  repu¬ 
tation  were  against  it,  and  it  stung  the  conscience;  it 
deafened  every  other  sound;  it  thundered;  it  roared 
like  a  tempest ;  the  stars  were  out  of  their  courses,  and 
the  inner  man  cried  out:  “Here  am  I,  send  me!  Send 
me!  Not  with  a  sword,  not  with  my  friends,  not 
with  wealth,  not  with  the  wisest  and  best,  but  against 


FOREWORD 


•  •  • 
vm 

them;  against  my  friends,  against  my  confidential  ad¬ 
visors,  against  riches  and  power  and  influence.  Send 
me  with  a  sermon;  with  a  pebble  and  a  sling,  but  I 
will  go,  and  I  must  go,  and  I  can  go  because  Thou  art 
sending  me.” 

Forty  years  ago  there  was  no  more  brilliant  preacher 
in  New  York  than  Charles  H.  Parkhurst.  He  was  the 
preacher  of  a  great  ecclesiastical  body,  signalized  for 
its  loyal  part  in  the  Revolutionary  War,  consecrated 
to  the  best  things  for  humanity.  His  church  was  up¬ 
town  on  one  of  the  city’s  great  squares.  His  pulpit 
was  historic.  He  was  a  cultured  son  of  Amherst  Col¬ 
lege;  his  tastes  were  literary;  he  was  gathering  to  his 
hearing  some  of  the  foremost  lights  of  the  western 
hemisphere’s  Metropolis.  Chapin’s  sacred  oratory  was 
a  setting  sun;  Bellows’  graceful  eloquence  was  drop¬ 
ping  its  fragrant  petals;  John  Hall  had  come  for  a 
service  fast  maturing;  Parkhurst  was  without  a  rival 
in  the  pulpit;  he  suggested  no  rival.  Among  the  fad¬ 
ing  lights  no  one  of  them  suggested  him;  he  was  of 
himself  and  needed  not  to  covet  any  man’s  gift  who 
was  passing  out  before  him.  He  could  afford  to  be 
himself  in  the  fear  of  his  God,  but  Dr.  Parkhurst 
turned  aside  from  all  of  this  and  went  out  whither  the 
Lord  would  send  him.  He  had  a  vision;  he  saw  his 
city  fast  being  given  over  to  the  wicked  one.  He  saw 
a  few  men  in  an  unequal  fight;  there  are  always  a  few. 
He  preached ;  he  put  on  an  armor  that  did  not  fit  him, 
but  he  made  it  fit  him,  and  he  preached  on,  and  changed 
the  current  of  his  life — what  it  might  have  become; 
not  what  God  meant  it  should  be,  but  what  human 


FOREWORD 


IX 


wisdom  and  prudence  mapped  it  out  to  be.  What  dis¬ 
appointment  it  secretly  must  have  been,  but  what  a 
triumphant  entry  into  immortality!  What  he  could 
not  do  he  had  compelled  others  to  do  by  his  preaching. 
He  had  forced  a  lawyer  as  brave  as  himself  and  as 
resourceful  to  use  the  courts.  He  had  revealed  to  his 
fellow  citizens  the  fires  of  Hell  in  the  nostrils  of  the 
monster  of  corruption,  consuming  the  innocent  and  de¬ 
stroying  a  city  which  he  was  sent  to  save  and  for  which 
God  had  prepared  him  among  the  hills  of  New  Eng¬ 
land.  And  it  was  to  be  done  as  it  always  must  be  done, 
by  preaching. 

Whatever  may  be  your  estimate  of  Dr.  C.  H.  Park- 
hurst  you  will  have  to  concede  his  greatest  power  was 
his  preaching.  That  he  might  have  developed  other 
talents  there  can  be  no  doubt.  He  had  the  qualities 
of  a  statesman,  but  he  would  have  failed  as  a  politician 
of  his  times  when  you  use  that  term  in  its  best  defini¬ 
tion,  for  he  was  not  politic.  There  was  no  balancing 
of  probabilities  or  possibilities;  there  could  be  but  one 
possibility,  and  that  must  square  with  what  he  under¬ 
stood  to  be  eternal  right  and  before  right  all  men  must 
go  down  or  stand  upon  right  at  any  cost.  No  man 
measures  anything  by  any  other  scale.  That  is  where 
the  preacher  differentiates;  what  is  the  commission; 
who  utters  the  command?  It  permits  no  such  thing  as 
a  bargain  or  a  price.  The  world  has  always  feared 
such  men;  if  it  had  had  enough  of  them  a  chance  of 
a  speedy  millennium  would  have  been  infinitely  im¬ 
proved.  Its  greatest  lack  today  is  that  such  men  are 
too  scarce  in  the  pulpit.  But  while  this  is  a  simple 


X 


FOREWORD 


statement,  it  is  not  all  of  it ;  it  carries  many  and  funda¬ 
mental  qualities. 

The  man  who  preaches  is  a  messenger  who  gives 
himself  daily  to  the  message  he  receives.  Anyone  who 
knows  C.  H.  Parkhurst  feels  the  force  of  his  whole 
consecration.  Preaching  with  him  is  not  a  profession; 
it  is  not  to  get  a  living  or  for  fame;  it  is  talent  as  a 
trust  for  which  there  is  an  accounting  to  be  given  and 
to  which  there  attaches  a  daily  conscience.  It  has  an 
objective. 

A  sermon  is  not  a  passing  entertainment.  It  is  not 
to  please  an  audience.  It  might  be  the  opposite  of  all 
that;  it  will  depend  upon  the  manner  of  man  you  are 
who  hear.  It  is  a  tremendous  responsibility  which  is 
imposed;  how  it  weighs  will  explain  the  preacher;  his 
vision,  his  interpretations  of  personal  privilege  and  lib¬ 
erties;  the  values  attaching  to  his  ministry,  what  he 
may  do  with  it  and  what  call  attaches  to  it.  A  call 
to  preach  is  not  a  voice  and  an  answer  from  which  a 
departure  is  taken  and  at  which  a  date  is  fixed,  and 
that  is  all;  it  is  a  day  by  day  affair  as  much  as  one’s 
daily  bread.  The  preacher  must  renew  it  to  know  that 
he  has  it;  he  cannot  lay  it  off  in  periods,  he  must  live 
it.  It  is  a  life.  He  synchronizes  it  with  the  rhythm  of 
his  heart.  You  never  will  understand  Dr.  Parkhurst 
until  you  feel  his  preaching  call  in  the  consecration  of 
his  being.  There  can  be  no  retreat.  To  carry  on  from 
day  to  day  appears  in  the  freshness  of  perpetual  ver¬ 
dure  and  bloom  of  thought.  Every  sermon,  even  if 
a  repetition  is  attempted,  is  a  new  application  which 
sounds  like  the  melody  of  a  new  truth.  You  never 


FOREWORD 


xi 


heard  it  on  this  wise  before.  It  has  been  growing  new 
roots  in  the  heart;  it  has  been  preparing  for  new  fruits 
in  its  blossoms.  There  are  bloomings  for  ornament 
only.  The  Japanese  cherry  never  fruits;  it  riots  in 
blossoms.  There  are  sermons  like  it ;  they  dazzle  with 
illustration  but  the  boughs  never  bend  under  fruit.  The 
hearer  of  Dr.  Parkhurst’s  sermon  must  solve  a  ques¬ 
tion  of  obligation;  he  must  choose  sides.  There  is 
nothing  indefinite  or  merely  ornamental  about  what  he 
has  heard;  it  is  not  a  Japanese  cherry  tree  to  admire 
simply ! 

Among  the  traits  of  Dr.  Parkhurst  as  a  preacher 
you  would  expect  courage  and  you  are  not  disap¬ 
pointed.  But  it  is  a  high  quality  of  courage.  There 
is  a  courage  which  is  belligerent  and  provocative;  it 
arouses  antagonism ;  it  is  combative.  There  is  another 
which  is  quiet  and  unassertive ;  its  source  is  conviction 
of  right  and  duty.  It  is  never  boastful  but  it  is  always 
respected.  It  does  not  need  to  count  the  cost,  it  has  but 
one  price  and  that  is  fixed  by  the  justice  and  merits  of 
the  cause.  There  is  a  courage  which  shouts  with  the 
crowd  and  it  goes  with  the  crowd  and  it  disappears 
when  the  crowd  does.  There  is  a  courage  which  stands 
alone,  having  settled  the  issue  and  already  taken  the 
consequences;  that  courage  is  dangerous.  There  is 
always  a  demand  for  such  courage  in  the  preaching 
which  conquers. 

Incisiveness  is  a  potent  quality  of  the  pulpit;  the 
power  of  analysis;  the  separation  of  truth  from  error, 
or  of  truth  into  its  parts  and  setting  them  forth  in  their 
relative  values  and  claims.  It  is  not  that  analysis  which 


Xll 


FOREWORD 


refines,  tediously,  distinctions  to  satisfy  the  uncertain¬ 
ties  of  one’s  own  mentality.  A  listener  to  Dr.  Park- 
hurst  always  carries  away  the  impression  that  the  truth 
under  discussion  has  had  an  impartial  hearing  in  the 
study  of  the  preacher,  in  all  of  its  bearings,  before  it 
is  submitted  to  the  hearers  in  the  audience.  No  es¬ 
sential  parts  are  missing.  There  is  no  blundering  by 
anatomical  carelessness;  it  has  been  divided  at  its  joints 
and  resolved  into  its  components,  that  God’s  thoughts 
may  be  seen  and  followed  in  their  order.  The  trouble 
with  many  who  feel  compelled  by  their  impulses  to 
build  sound  morals,  is  their  failure  to  appreciate  rela¬ 
tions  of  the  truth  in  its  application  to  humanity  as  a 

harmonizing  whole.  The  analytical,  incisive  mind  does 

\ 

not  embarrass  his  cause  by  such  blundering;  and  this 
leads  to  another  preaching  quality  somewhat  kindred. 
That  is  the  comprehensive  gift.  It  may  be  cultivated 
but  it  seems  to  me  first  a  gift.  Some  minds  will  see 
only  one  thing  in  a  landscape;  it  may  be  only  moun¬ 
tains  or  all  lakes  or  all  sky  lines.  But  there  are  valleys 
and  foothills;  there  is  White  Face  and  forest  preserves, 
and  meadows  and  gorges.  It  is  the  high  art  of  the 
preacher  to  discuss  them  all. 

One  of  the  high  qualities  which  has  fitted  Dr.  Park- 
hurst  to  lead  the  thoughts  of  men  has  been  the  teaching 
character  of  his  preaching.  Nothing  has  ever  been  so 
great  that  it  could  be  enthroned  to  the  exclusion  of  all 
things  beside,  and  nothing  is  so  small  that  it  could  be 
laid  aside  as  of  no  consequence,  in  any  great  appeal 
which  must  go  forth  in  the  name  of  God.  A  judgment 
of  relativity  should  be  classed  among  the  ten  talents, 


FOREWORD 


•  •  • 
xiu 

or  one  talent  equal  to  ten.  In  this  Dr.  Parkhurst  quali¬ 
fies  superbly  and  he  should  be  often  heard  and 
faithfully  studied  by  forcible  reformers  who  fail  to 
comprehend  the  value  of  comprehensiveness. 

As  a  constant  preacher  Dr.  Parkhurst  has  much  to 
aid  him  in  the  free  gifts,  which  if  cultivated,  are  what 
they  are  because  they  were  present  to  be  cultivated. 
An  impressive  personality;  an  attractive  style;  a  clear 
voice;  a  quiet  earnestness  and  intensity;  a  happy  illus¬ 
tration  passing  from  classic  literature  to  life’s  common 
story  in  striking  simile,  sometimes  relieving  the  hearer 
from  the  tension  of  his  thought,  sometimes  flooding 
the  whole  subject  with  a  light  like  a  sunburst,  so  radi¬ 
ant,  so  happy,  that  you  wonder  it  did  not  occur  to  you. 
They  are  not  overwrought,  they  are  not  conceits,  they 
belong  to  Parkhurst,  and  they  bear  his  trademark. 
They  are  surprises  in  the  landscape  through  which  he 
takes  you.  They  illumine  logic. 

Dr.  Parkhurst  is  well  timed.  He  comprehends  his 
subject  and  has  no  trouble  in  making  you  comprehend 
it,  but  he  does  not  exhaust  it  nor  himself  nor  you.  You 
always  wish  there  were  more  of  the  same  sort.  It  is  a 
pity  that  so  many  preachers  spoil  their  sermons  by  over¬ 
preaching  them. 

Dr.  Parkhurst  uses  a  manuscript.  I  have  wondered 
whether  he  would  do  better  without  it ;  I  doubt  it.  That 
question  he  doubtless  has  raised  and  settled.  Some 
preachers  spoil  themselves  by  trying  to  be  extemporane¬ 
ous  without  the  gift  or  the  nerve  control.  Some  never 
can  handle  a  manuscript  successfully.  Dr.  Parkhurst 
uses  the  manuscript  most  effectively  and  when  he  is 


XIV 


FOREWORD 


through  you  lack  nothing  of  aroused  convictions  and 
you  are  glad  that  it  is  in  form  for  preservation  and  he 
has  it  as  he  thought  it  and  said  it  and  not  as  a  reporter 
spoils  it. 

The  friends  of  Dr.  Parkhurst  hail  with  delight  the 
announcement  that  after  the  retiring  hour  of  the  army 
and  the  courts  is  past,  a  church  of  another  denomina¬ 
tion  has  persuaded  him  to  give  his  great  city  another 
year’s  preaching.  We  envy  this  congregation,  but 
those  of  us  who  have  the  privilege  of  his  sermons  in 
the  summer  among  the  Adirondacks  will  insist  that  the 
vacation  period  shall  not  be  shortened  because  a  con¬ 
gregation  from  all  over  our  country  will  be  waiting 
eagerly  one  of  America’s  greatest  preachers ! 

James  R.  Day, 

Ex-Chancellor  Syracuse  University. 


A  TRIBUTE 


Os 


“That  young  minister  has  the  right  spirit.  He  will 
be  heard  from  yet.”  Thus  commented  the  late  Bishop 
Henry  C.  Potter  after  a  visit  to  the  “white  church  on 
the  hill”  at  Lenox,  where  he  heard  Doctor  Parkhurst 
preach.  In  the  writer’s  presence  the  Bishop  in  1904 
narrated  this  circumstance  as  attending  his  visit  to  the 
church  in  Lenox.  At  that  time  Doctor  Parkhurst  was 
unheard  of  outside  of  the  community  where  he  minis- 
tered  to  his  rural  congregation.  His  transference  to 
an  opulent  metropolitan  church  was  to  him,  of  course, 
an  event  of  great  importance,  but  to  citizens  of  New 
York  it  proved  of  even  greater  importance. 

At  that  time  conditions  in  the  municipal  life  of  New 
York  were  what  was  publicly  described  as  intolerable, 
and  yet  there  seemed  to  the  people  no  means  of  relief. 
Like  a  pall  there  settled  down  upon  the  city  that  feeling 
of  apathy  which  not  infrequently  is  characteristic  of 
democratic  institutions  and  which  expresses  itself  in  the 
popular  saying  “Oh,  well,  we  cannot  change  things. 
Let  us  make  what  we  can  out  of  them.”  Since  the 
close  of  the  Civil  War,  by  the  process  of  political  party 
accretion  there  had  been  accumulating  misgovernment 
and  political  corruption.  The  people  were  thoroughly 
aware  of  their  existence,  but  seemed  to  be  either  in¬ 
capable  or  unwilling  to  relieve  themselves  from  the 


XV 


XVI 


A  TRIBUTE 


ever-increasing  burden  of  odium  and  taxation.  To  the 
student  of  the  workings  of  democratic  institutions,  it 
must  be  cause  for  deep  concern  to  observe  on  the  one 
hand  the  apathy  of  the  well-meaning,  comfortable  citi¬ 
zen  who  is  satisfied  to  drift  along  with  the  tide  because 
it  would  be  too  much  trouble  to  pull  against  it,  and  on 
the  other  hand  the  large  number  of  men  who  have 
either  an  interest  or  a  profit,  actual  or  expectant,  in  the 
existent  political  order. 

Party  rule  or  ascendancy  as  such  cannot  be  held  re¬ 
sponsible  for  bad  government  or  political  corruption. 
It  is  the  perversion  of  the  party  machinery  to  evil  pur¬ 
poses  by  men  who  work  into  control  and  who  cleverly 
utilize  party  feelings  and  loyalty  to  subserve  their  own 
evil  designs. 

Several  efforts  were  made  to  break  the  domination 
of  the  “ring”  that  held  the  city  in  its  iron  grip,  but 
with  one  exception  they  all  lacked  sincerity  and  were 
simply  the  noise  made  by  the  “outs”  trying  to  break 
into  the  “ins.”  That  exception  was  resultant  from  the 
exposure  of  the  Tweed  plunderers,  and  when  the  pub¬ 
lic-spirited  men  that  led  that  movement  passed  from 
the  stage  of  activity  the  city  relapsed  into  a  passive 
quietude  which  was  occasionally  ruffled  by  the  spas¬ 
modic  efforts  of  the  various  brands  of  democracy  seek¬ 
ing  the  stamp  of  regularity.  Almost  every  year  a 
movement  for  reform  was  started.  Sometimes  the  re¬ 
formers  were  partially  successful,  but  when  they  were 
the  reformers  after  a  short  time  needed  reformation. 
Generally  speaking,  the  struggle  for  municipal  control 
was  for  the  offices,  the  patronage  and  the  consequent 


A  TRIBUTE 


XVII 


pickings.  There  was  no  genuine  attempt  to  purify  the 
city  government  and  construct  a  better  system  in  its 
stead.  It  was  before  the  era  of  great  corporate  fran¬ 
chises  and  industrial  development  that  have  made  politi¬ 
cal  favors  so  valuable.  The  prevailing  vices  of  govern¬ 
ment  affected  the  people  in  their  intimate  relations  of 
life,  and,  consequently,  were  the  more  galling. 

The  maintenance  of  peace  and  order  and  the  safety 
of  person  and  property  were  of  personal  interest  to  the 
citizen,  and  the  department  of  the  city  government 
charged  with  these  functions  was  the  one  that  bore  the 
most  intimate  relations  to  the  people  in  their  lives  and 
daily  occupations  This  department,  known  as  the 
Police  Department,  had  been  for  years  made  the  foot¬ 
ball  of  party  politics,  had  been  used  as  an  instrument 
for  party  advantage,  and  incidentally  as  a  means  of 
profit  to  the  favored  among  party  supporters.  It 
would  be  difficult  to  conceive  a  more  effective  method 
to  accomplish  these  purposes  than  the  one  that  had 
been  put  in  operation,  known  as  the  bipartisan  commis¬ 
sion.  This  consisted  in  the  requirement  of  law  that  the 
Department  of  Police  should  be  governed  by  a  com¬ 
mission  consisting  of  four  members,  two  from  the 
Democratic  Party  and  two  from  the  Republican  Party. 
In  selecting  their  respective  commissioners,  the  party 
leaders  took  good  care  that  the  most  trusted,  useful 
and  serviceable  men  to  their  party  were  selected,  and 
from  this  system  there  sprang  the  most  odious,  oppres¬ 
sive  and  corrupt  system  of  police  administration  that 
ever  disgraced  municipal  government. 

Appointment  on  the  force  as  patrolman  could  only 


XVI 11 


A  TRIBUTE 


be  obtained  by  purchase,  and  thereafter  every  step  of 
preferment  had  to  be  paid  for.  Efficiency  in  the  per¬ 
formance  of  duty  was  of  but  slight  consideration. 
The  rank  of  captain  was  highly  prized,  eagerly  sought 
for,  and  commanded  a  purchase  price  in  proportion  to 
the  illicit  revenue  to  be  derived.  A  police  captain  was 
a  veritable  czar  in  his  precinct.  He  exercised  arbitrary 
power  over  every  person  and  business  that  could  be 
brought  within  police  regulation  or  interference.  Nor 
was  this  surveillance  confined  to  those  occupations  that 
existed  by  infringement  of  municipal  ordinance  or  vio¬ 
lation  of  law.  It  extended  to  the  trader  and  merchant 
in  legitimate  trade  and  commerce.  Police  protection 
of  premises  or  property  that  should  have  been  given  as 
matter  of  right  and  duty  was  obtained  only  by  pur¬ 
chase.  All  occupations  or  lines  of  conduct  that  were 
followed  in  defiance  of  law  and  morals  were  subjected 
to  tribute.  From  the  liquor  saloon  to  the  gambling 
house,  from  the  policy  shop  to  the  pool  room,  from  the 
fashionable  house  of  ill  fame  that  had  to  pay  monthly, 
according  to  the  neighborhood  and  number  of  its  in¬ 
mates,  to  the  unfortunate  street-walker  that  had  to  pay 
nightly  for  the  privilege  of  walking  the  patrolman's 
beat — every  source  of  blackmail  and  extortion  was 
utilized  and  formulated  into  a  system,  so  that  the  trail 
of  graft  was  traceable  through  nearly  every  channel  of 
municipal  life  and  activity. 

Mere  accumulation  of  wealth  through  graft  was  not 
the  only  pursuit  of  the  police  captain.  He  was  ex¬ 
pected  by  his  political  sponsors  to  see  that  the  election 
districts  in  his  precinct  made  suitable  returns  on  the 


A  TRIBUTE 


xix 


night  of  election.  In  fact,  there  were  few  things  in 
the  life  of  the  city  in  which  this  omnipresent  official  did 
not  participate.  The  extent  of  his  manifold  activities 
was  well  expressed  by  the  Bohemian  people  who  re¬ 
sided  in  a  certain  precinct  and  who  from  a  painful 
experience  found  a  word  in  their  Czech  language  to 
convey  their  understanding  of  his  multifarious  charac¬ 
ter,  and  that  was  the  “Pantata,”  which  meant  “Father 
of  all  things.” 

But  while  corruption  ran  riot  and  its  flood  was  taken 
as  a  matter  of  course,  it  was  not  the  worst  affliction  on 
a  citizenship  that  seemed  inert  and  supine.  That  afflic¬ 
tion  was  the  abject  and  cringing  submission  to  police 
violence.  Clubbing  was  the  order  of  the  day.  No 
police  duty  could  be  performed  without  clubbing.  No 
matter  how  slight  the  infraction  of  peace,  the  offender 
had  to  be  clubbed,  and  it  was  not  all  done  in  public. 
Frequently  the  unfortunate  who  resisted  arrest  or  other¬ 
wise  aroused  the  wrath  of  the  guardians  of  the  peace, 
was  beaten  in  the  police  station  cell.  Occasionally  a 
citizen  who  had  been  wantonly  assaulted  by  a  policeman 
sought  legal  redress,  and  he  was  laughed  out  of  court. 
The  quickest  and  shortest  route  to  popular  or  official 
favor  was  brutality  in  the  use  of  the  club  on  the  citizen. 
Indeed,  the  most  popular,  if  not  the  most  potential, 
officer  of  high  rank  on  the  force  was  generally  known 

as  “Clubber  - Withal  there  was  thorough 

efficiency  by  the  police  in  dealing  with  the  declared  ene¬ 
mies  of  society,  such  as  burglars  and  robbers.  From 
the  very  nature  of  their  criminal  pursuits  they  could 
not  be  arranged  or  reduced  to  a  system  that  would 


XX 


A  TRIBUTE 


yield  tribute.  Besides,  when  drastic  methods  were  used 
to  protect  banks,  houses  and  highways,  the  people,  by 
way  of  compensation,  became  acquiescent  to*  the  reign 
of  the  club  and  the  welter  of  graft. 

These  twin  evils  so  encrusted  New  York  that  her 
people  became  deadened  in  civic  pride  and  American 
citizenship  to  such  extent  that  it  seemed  nothing  short 
of  a  moral  earthquake  could  arouse  them.  And  it 
came,  and  from  a  quarter  least  expected.  In  the  month 
of  February,  1892,  Dr.  Parkhurst  delivered  his  mem¬ 
orable  course  of  sermons  in  which  he  with  vigorous 
and  scathing  language  riveted  the  attention  of  the  people 
to  the  shameful  and  degraded  condition  of  their  city. 
At  first  he  was  derided,  then  he  was  jeered,  then  he 
was  challenged,  and  finally  dared  to  proof.  That  a 
mere  minister  should  use  his  pulpit  as  a  hustings  plat¬ 
form  from  which  to  fulminate  political  harangues  was 
a  disgrace  to  the  church  and  should  not  be  tolerated.  It 
was  eminently  proper  that  a  minister  of  the  Gospel 
should  in  general  and  glittering  terms  denounce  Satan 
and  all  his  works  and  extol  piety  and  all  its  fruits;  but 
that  he  should  denounce  crime  flourishing  with  the  con¬ 
nivance  of  the  public  authorities  was  a  thing  unheard 
of  and  calculated  to  scandalize  religion.  This  was  the 
chorus  of  condemnation  joined  in  by  the  thoughtless, 
indifferent,  bellwethered  crowd,  while  those  for  who 
because  of  interest  or  guilt  felt  the  well-aimed  shafts, 
language  failed  to  plumb  the  depths  of  their  indigna¬ 
tion.  The  public  authorities  whose  duty  it  was  to  in¬ 
vestigate  whether  the  conditions  described  existed, 
laughed  at  the  Doctor’s  charges  with  scorn  and  refused 


A  TRIBUTE 


xxi 


to  take  any  official  notice.  Then  arose  a  demand  from 
press  and  public  for  proofs.  This  it  was  confidently 
believed  would  silence  the  Doctor  and  extinguish  him 
in  the  confusion  of  failure. 

How  could  such  proofs  be  adduced  in  the  face  of  re¬ 
iterated  declaration  by  the  sworn  officers  of  the  law  that 
the  charges  were  groundless?  Here  was  a  test.  To 
meet  it  required  the  very  highest  quality  of  moral  cour¬ 
age,  a  courage  that  did  not  partake  of  the  qualities  of 
the  animal  or  brute,  but  one  that  searched  the  very  soul 
for  strength  and  fortitude.  Failure  meant  all  that  the 
word  implies,  and  in  addition  the  derision  of  the  mob 
and  the  mockery  of  the  accused.  The  test  was  met 
triumphantly.  The  proofs  were  produced,  and  the 
challengers  were  confounded.  Immediately  the  public 
conscience  was  quickened,  civic  bodies  such  as  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce  commenced  to  move.  The 
Grand  Jury  began  to  inquire.  Civic  movements  sprang 
into  existence.  A  halting  legislature  decreed  an  inves¬ 
tigation.  And  there  followed  an  exposure  of  corrupt 
practices  in  municipal  government  that  shocked  the 
country. 

The  influence  and  effect  produced  were  not  confined 
to  the  City  of  New  York.  Large  and  small  municipali¬ 
ties  throughout  the  United  States  took  warning  and 
adopted  measures  for  protection  against  the  spread  of 
the  evil  contagion. 

While  it  may  be  true  that  lapses  have  occurred,  yet 
on  the  whole  there  has  been  a  great  improvement  in 
municipal  government.  The  moral  tone  of  the  people 
in  relation  to  it  has  been  elevated  to  a  higher  and 


XXII 


A  TRIBUTE 


healthier  plane.  Particularly  is  the  change  made  mani¬ 
fest  in  the  attitude  of  the  policeman  to  the  citizen.  No 
longer  does  he  twirl  and  use  his  “locust”  on  the  un¬ 
offending  citizen  as  if  it  were  his  legitimate  function. 
The  citizen  now  has  rights  which  even  the  uniformed 
paid  public  servant  must  respect.  To  Dr.  Parkhurst 
beyond  all  other  men  must  be  accorded  the  credit  for 
this  great  change.  His  genius  and  courage  were  the 
sparks  of  ignition.  He  has  been  classed  as  an  idealist 
in  pursuit  of  a  dream  impossible  of  realization.  He 
recognized  that  by  man-made  law  alone  men  could  not 
be  made  honest  nor  women  be  made  virtuous.  He  did 
not  set  himself  up  as  an  evangel  to  abolish  the  social 
evil.  What  he  did  direct  his  efforts  to  was  the  destruc¬ 
tion  of  the  criminal  combination  between  the  licensed 
violators  of  law  and  morals  and  the  officers  of  the  law 
who  were  sworn  to  prevent  such  violations  and  who  for 
their  tolerance  and  participation  derived  wealth  and 
power. 


John  W.  Goff. 


CONTENTS 


PART  I— EXPERIENCES 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I.  Early  Days  . 3 

II.  Amherst  College  .  28 

III.  My  First  Pastorate .  45 

IV.  My  Second  Pastorate .  59 

V.  Mountaineering  . . .  78 

VI.  The  Ascent  of  the  Matterhorn .  99 

VII.  Successful  Assault  Upon  the  Tammany 
Interest,  Conducted  Under  the  Aus¬ 
pices  of  the  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Crime  in  1892-1894 .  106 


PART  II— REFLECTIONS 

1.  Am  I  a  Trinitarian? . . .  149 

2.  Undervaluation  of  the  Old  Testament...  153 

3.  Fitness  for  the  Ministry  .  160 

4.  The  Study  of  Theology  .  166 

5.  Denominationalism  . _ .  171 

6.  The  Church  Militant .  174 

7.  The  Doctrine  of  Immortality .  178 

xxiii 


XXIV 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER  PAGE 

8.  Religion  . 183 

9.  Faith  .  189 

10.  The  Sheep  and  the  Goats .  192 

11.  Does  the  Heavenly  World  Differ  Funda¬ 

mentally  from  the  Earthly  One? .  196 

12.  Darwinism  and  the  Church  .  200 

13.  Compulsory  Morality  .  206 

14.  An  Education  Is  No  One’s  Exclusive 

Privilege .  211 

15.  The  Fellowship  of  Nations  . 215 

16.  Mother  and  Child  .  220 

17.  The  Art  of  Longevity . 225 

18.  Innovations  .  228 

19.  National  Character  Is  Dependent  on 

Domestic  Character .  232 

20.  The  Men  Who  Labor  . .  . . . .  236 

21.  The  Determination  of  His  Life  Work....  240 

22.  Treating  Criminals  as  Moral  Invalids.  . .  .  244 

23.  A  Primary  and  an  Auxiliary  Life’s  Purpose  248 

24.  Our  International  Future  .  252 


Part  I 

EXPERIENCES 


CHAPTER  I 


EARLY  DAYS 

To  give  the  public  the  story  of  my  life  is  to  make  my¬ 
self  public  property,  to  do  which  is  not  presumptuous, 
for  it  is  to  the  public  that  every  man  belongs. 

Life  has  its  inner  and  outer  side.  Neither  is  com¬ 
plete  without  the  other.  One’s  habit  is  to  uncover 
thoughts  and  impulses  only  after  having  screened  them 
through  the  fine  meshes  of  prudence  and  reserve.  Like 
dealers  in  household  commodities,  we  place  in  the  show- 
window  only  such  samples  of  stock  as  will  invite  ap¬ 
proving  attention.  We  all  like  to  pass  for  better  and 
wiser  than  we  are  ;  and  when  we  confess  in  the  assembly 
of  the  saints  to  the  Lord  our  depravity,  we  do  it  in 
pursuance  of  an  accepted  ritual  and  not  with  the  expec¬ 
tation  that  we  shall  be  taken  seriously  by  our  human 
auditors.  The  story  of  a  man’s  life  then  should  be  the 
record  not  only  of  what  he  has  been  doing  and  attempt¬ 
ing  to  do,  but  also  of  what  he  has  been  thinking,  feeling 
and  dreaming,  and  of  the  way  in  which  he  has  reacted 
upon  the  impact  of  outward  events. 

What  we  call  our  life  is  only  so  much  of  our  history 
as  is  bracketed  between  two  momentous  events,  Birth 
and  Death;  sunrise  and  sunset:  one  short  day  between. 
We  are  treading  here  so  closely  upon  the  margin  of  the 

3 


4  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


unknown  that  we  need  to  step  carefully.  Birth  and 
death  are  common  but  never  commonplace.  Though 
billions  have  passed  through  these  twin  experiences 
there  has  been  no  instance  of  either  that  was  not 
shrouded  in  impenetrable  mystery  and  invested  with 
unspeakable  solemnity.  It  is  a  fault  of  our  nature  that 
frequent  repetition  and  continued  familiarity  despoil  of 
its  meaning  even  that  which  is  essentially  marvelous. 
We  become  able  to  stand  with  our  back  to  either  the 
rising  or  the  setting  sun,  and  to  walk  in  the  night  with 
no  consciousness  of  the  stars.  We  are  common  suf¬ 
ferers  under  the  blight  of  blunted  sensibilities. 

BIRTH 

I  was  sufficiently  advanced  to  be  able  to  be  born  on 
the  17th  of  April,  1842.  My  life  was  the  continuance 
of  my  father’s  and  mother’s  life,  as  was  theirs  the  pro¬ 
longation  of  life  inherited  from  an  indefinite,  not  to  say 
infinite,  series  of  foregoing  generations,  creating  for 
me  therefore  an  origin  lying  back  in  remote  antiquity. 

The  genealogical  table  recorded  in  St.  Luke’s  Gospel 
makes  “Seth  the  son  of  Adam,  who  was  the  son  of 
God.”  Between  the  last  two  named  in  the  series — 
Adam  and  God — there  can  be  interpolated  as  many 
generations  as  imagination  may  extemporize  or  science 
justify.  According  to  the  authority  of  the  latter,  the 
table  of  descent,  if  complete,  would  have  to  enumerate 
generations  sufficient  in  number  to  fill  fifty  or  a  hun¬ 
dred  thousand  years.  And  if  the  race  to  which  we 
belong  sprang  from  a  single  source  then  I  am  lineally 
descended  from  the  original  human,  saying  nothing  of 


EARLY  DAYS 


5 


what  the  original  human  may  have  developed  from. 
All  of  which,  as  I  look  back  from  April  17th,  1842, 
affords  me  material  interesting  to  contemplate;  and 
others,  of  course,  have  the  same  fascinating  retrospect 
offered  them. 

In  all  of  this  I  am  very  serious.  There  is  an  eternity 
behind  us  as  well  as  one  forward  of  us;  and  with  the 
one  that  is  behind  us  we  appear  to  have  personal  con¬ 
nection.  And  because  the  chain  of  my  descent  con¬ 
tained  just  such  links  as  it  did,  I  was  able  to  be  born  on 
the  17th  of  April,  1842. 

There  is  no  question  or  dispute  as  to  the  origin  of  my 
body.  But  where  did  my  soul  come  from?  It  is  my 
soul  that  makes  1842  significant  either  to  me  or  to  those 
interested  in  me.  Soul  and  body  are  not  identical. 
There  is  no  fact  of  which  we  are  more  conscious, 
especially  in  our  vivid  moments:  closely  connected  they 
are,  of  course;  wonderfully  interlocked  undoubtedly; 
but  no  immediacy  of  interlocking  constitutes  identity. 
And  what  is  more,  the  more  advanced  the  point  to 
which  we  carry  the  culture  of  the  soul  the  more  assured 
we  become  that  body  is  one  thing  and  soul  something 
distinctly  else.  This  is  so  essentially  a  part  of  my  creed 
that  I  could  not  consistently  omit  its  mention. 

Also  it  is  only  when  I  am  conscious  of  the  separate 
and  substantive  character  of  the  soul  that  I  am  able  to 
be  confident  of  immortality.  People  whose  experience 
is  housed  in  their  bodies  have  not  such  a  practical  belief 
in  immortality  as  to  make  of  it  a  working  conviction. 
Physical  sensation  and  “the  power  of  the  endless  life” 
are  incompatible.  We  may  entertain  the  idea,  but  an 


6  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


idea  that  is  registered  in  our  creed  is  not  necessarily  an 
element  of  our  conscious  and  sustaining  faith. 

But  if  soul  can  exist  after  it  leaves  the  body  there  is 
created  a  presumption  that  it  might  have  existed  before 
it  took  the  body.  Why  not?  It  is  certainly  worth  con¬ 
sidering.  Going  into  eternity  would  be  balanced  by 
coming  out  from  eternity.  We  may  have  existed  in  our 
spiritual  connections  a  great  deal  longer  than  it  seems 
we  have  in  our  bodily  connections.  There  is  no  harm 
in  thus  knocking  at  the  door  of  the  great  undisclosed 
secrets  of  life.  “There  are  more  things  in  heaven  and 
earth  than  are  dreamed  of  in  our  philosophy.”  There 
is  no  danger  that  our  conceptions  will  outmeasure  reali¬ 
ties.  We  see  more  when  we  look  up  than  when  we  look 
down.  One  may  be  a  visionary,  but  a  visionary  is 
nearer  the  truth  than  a  contented  materialist. 

We  may  not  confidently  base  our  religious  convic¬ 
tions  upon  the  pictorial  representations  made  in  the 
early  chapters  of  Genesis,  but  it  is  worth  noticing  that 
what  is  there  recognized  as  the  original  man  is  repre¬ 
sented  as  having  been  composed  of  two  elements,  one 
from  the  ground,  the  other  from  the  Creator.  If  from 
the  Creator  it  could  carry  no  date.  There  might  also 
be  cited  the  frequency  with  which  we  are  in  Scripture 
designated  as  God’s  children,  and  once  by  St.  Paul  as 
God’s  offspring.  But  to  be  a  child  imports  the  entrance 
into  it  of  some  element  that  was  a  quotation  from  its 
father.  So  that  I  cannot  be  properly  called  one  of 
God’s  children  unless,  with  the  human  that  is  in  me, 
there  is  combined  something  that  came  to  me  from 


EARLY  DAYS 


7 


God;  eternal  therefore;  undated;  eternally  prior  to 

1842. 

These  are  some  of  the  thoughts  that  cluster  around 
my  birth.  I  doubt  if  they  bear  the  mark  of  any  theo¬ 
logical  seminary — an  institution  which,  perhaps  unfor¬ 
tunately,  I  never  attended.  As  will  appear  later  on,  I 
have  always  been  more  fascinated  by  the  study  and  by 
the  preaching  of  individual  truths,  than  by  the  process 
of  dovetailing  them  into  each  other  and  framing  them 
into  a  theological  system.  My  preference  for  the  for¬ 
mer  rather  than  for  the  latter  may  have  been  indiscreet. 
If  I  could  have  my  way — which  would  very  likely  not 
be  a  good  way — I  would  take  what  are  called  “theolog¬ 
ical  seminaries”  and  rebaptize  them  as  “schools  of 
Christian  learning.”  Perhaps  that  would  do  something 
toward  minimizing  the  necessity  for  competitive  insti¬ 
tutions. 

MY  ANCESTRY 

Everything  that  is  essential  has  already  been  said  ex¬ 
cept  what  pertains  to  my  immediate  parentage. 

My  father,  Charles  F.  W.  Parkhurst,  was  a  farmer. 
His  property,  which  consisted  of  arable  land  and  wood¬ 
land,  lay  in  Ashland,  Mass.,  and  was  an  inheritance 
from  my  grandfather,  Ephraim  Parkhurst.  Some¬ 
thing  detailed  must  be  said  about  him  as  well  as  about 
my  mother,  for  their  character  was  so  pronounced  as 
almost  to  predestine  the  character  of  the  son. 

It  has  often  been  related  of  those  who  afterward 
became  ministers  that  they  were  born  of  poor  but  pious 
parents.  My  father  was  not  poor,  but,  for  a  New  Eng- 


8  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


land  farmer,  was  quite  comfortably  fixed.  Nor  was 
he  pious;  on  the  contrary  his  religion  was  altogether 
sound  and  wholesome.  He  had  an  academic  education, 
and  already  at  the  age  of  nineteen,  and  while  still  car¬ 
rying  on  his  farm  work,  commenced  teaching  winter 
school,  a  course  which  he  followed  for  twenty-one  suc¬ 
cessive  years.  He  was  a  thorough  student  of  English 
and  never  committed  any  thought  to  writing  without 
giving  to  it  felicitous  expression.  This  followed  natu¬ 
rally  because  of  the  wealth  of  his  vocabulary.  During 
a  three  months’  illness  he  had  devoted  himself  ex¬ 
clusively  to  Webster’s  dictionary. 

He  was  thoroughly  New  England.  His  spirit  was 
one  of  uncompromise.  What  was  right  was  right; 
what  was  wrong  was  wrong.  He  believed  in  heaven 
and  believed  just  as  much  in  hell.  His  theology  was  a 
quotation  from  the  Bible,  which  he  interpreted  literally 
and  accepted  implicitly:  “God  began  the  world  Mon¬ 
day  and  finished  it  Saturday.” 

He  was  head  of  the  household  and  also  its  priest. 
Every  morning  he  read  us  a  chapter  from  the  Bible  and 
followed  it  with  prayer;  always  asked  a  blessing  at 
table ;  every  Sunday,  whatever  the  weather,  took  us  all 
to  church,  sat  at  the  head  of  the  pew,  mother  at  the  foot, 
with  the  four  children  judiciously  arranged  between. 

Such  a  regime  was  not  felt  by  us  as  severe.  We 
knew  nothing  different  and  imagined  nothing  different. 
It  is  better  to  be  brought  up  than  to  come  up.  We 
never  questioned  but  that  it  was  right  that  we  should 
be  under  authority;  that  father’s  word  should  be  law 
and  that  disobedience  should  be  punished.  That  pol- 


EARLY  DAYS 


9 


icy,  continued  year  after  year,  wrought  in  us  a  robust¬ 
ness  of  moral  fiber  that  never  could  be  gotten  out  of  our 
system.  His  love  for  us  was  intense  but  not  demonstra¬ 
tive,  and  his  whole  life  was  offered  on  the  altar  of 
devotion  to  wife  and  children. 

But  while  father  was  Mount  Sinai,  mother  was  Cal¬ 
vary,  and  between  the  two  we  secured  the  entire  thing, 
the  Law  and  the  Gospel.  He  furnished  basis  for  her 
gentleness  and  she  softened  the  edges  of  his  asperity. 

My  mother  also  was  from  New  England  and  as 
feminine  as  father  was  masculine.  She  believed  it  to 
be  a  woman’s  duty  to  marry,  to  have  children,  and  to 
take  care  of  them  herself  instead  of  farming  them  out 
to  a  nurse.  She  did  all  her  own  work,  ran  a  dairy,  and 
when  time  hung  heavily  on  her  hands  taught  school  in 
the  summer.  There  was  nothing  apologetic  about  New 
England  women  of  that  date.  Listlessness  was  a  mis¬ 
demeanor  and  incompetency  a  crime. 

Mother  sharply  discriminated  between  the  sexes  and 
scorned  effeminate  men  and  mannish  women.  In  her 
estimate,  it  belonged  to  men  to  take  care  of  outside 
things  and  to  women  to  take  care  of  inside  ones.  For 
a  woman  to  ride  a  horse  astride  she  would  have  re¬ 
garded  as  vulgar  immodesty.  She  would  nearly  as  soon 
have  appeared  in  a  state  of  nature  as  wear  a  pair  of 
feminine  pantaloons — what  the  young  women  of  pres¬ 
ent  date  euphemistically  designate  as  knickerbockers. 
To  have  been  caught  smoking  would  have  cost  her  even 
her  devoted  husband’s  contempt.  As  for  “women’s 
rights,”  she  gloried  in  the  rights  she  had  and  felt  no 
hankering  for  those  that  did  not  belong  to  her.  If  I 


10  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


had  not  had  such  a  mother,  I  should  be  able  to  con¬ 
template  with  more  consideration  the  average  women 
of  the  period.  I  do  not  want  to  put  her  upon  too  high 
a  pedestal.  There  were  times  when  I  did  not  like  her, 
but  they  were  just  the  times  when  I  think  she  did  not 
exactly  like  me.  She  labored  for  my  moral  betterment 
with  maternal  solicitude  and  with  moderate  success,  but 
matters  never  reached  such  a  point  that  she  felt  justified 
in  calling  me  her  “angel  child.”  She  lived  for  her  chil¬ 
dren,  and  very  precious  and  sweet  is  their  memory  of 
her. 

Such  was  the  home  in  which  I  lived  till  I  was  twenty, 
and  any  boy  must  have  been  dull  beyond  the  reach  of 
illumination  and  depraved  beyond  the  reach  of  redemp¬ 
tion  not  to  have  derived  from  such  influence  some 
germinal  impulses  of  intelligence  and  some  incipient 
impulses  toward  nobility  of  life. 

Before  taking  up  matters  distinct  from  the  interior 
quality  of  my  home,  I  want  to  call  more  pointed  atten¬ 
tion  to  the  relations  between  my  father  and  mother  in 
the  matter  of  sex,  and  to  the  normal  distribution  be¬ 
tween  them  of  domestic  functions — normal  at  any  rate 
according  to  the  standard  of  Scripture,  and  normal 
according  to  the  usages  that  until  comparatively  re¬ 
cently  have  been  in  vogue  in  the  better  class  of  Amer¬ 
ican  families. 

Father  was  the  head  of  the  house,  the  master,  the 
court  of  last  resort.  Mother  was  always  cooperant 
with  him  in  her  own  sphere,  where  full  authority  was 
allowed  her,  and  the  spheres  of  operation  were  appor¬ 
tioned  on  the  basis  of  sex.  The  line  between  masculine 


EARLY  DAYS 


11 


and  feminine  was  recognized  and  definitely  drawn;  and 
from  neither  side  was  there  any  disposition  to  overstep 
that  line. 

This  leads  naturally  to  the  statement  that  society  is 
threatened  by  the  diminished  attention  shown  to  sex 
distinction.  In  any  man  who  is  normal  his  masculine 
quality  extends  through  his  entire  system.  In  any 
woman  who  is  normal  her  feminine  quality  extends 
through  her  entire  system.  Her  womanhood  does  not 
consist  simply  in  being  constituted  for  the  production 
and  rearing  of  children,  but  she  is  woman  in  all  the 
component  elements  of  her  being;  in  the  delicacy  of  her 
physical  constitution,  in  the  character  of  her  thought,  in 
the  quality  of  her  emotions,  in  the  scope  of  her  pur¬ 
poses  and  ambitions.  If  she  is  thoroughly  woman  she 
is  woman  in  all  that  she  is  and  does. 

Members  of  the  two  sexes  respectively  being  distinct 
by  nature,  normal  development  will  operate  to  increase 
that  distinction,  so  that  instead  of  tending  to  make  them 
more  and  more  alike  it  will  make  them  increasingly 
different,  less  and  less  fitted  for  the  same  kind  of  ex¬ 
perience,  the  same  order  of  conduct,  the  same  sphere  of 
action.  A  mannish  woman  is  neither  man  nor  woman, 
but  a  freak.  Instead  of  adding  to  her  charm  she  blem¬ 
ishes  it.  Instead  of  broadening  her  influence  she  con¬ 
tracts  it. 

The  region  of  my  birth  was  pure  nature  and  devoted 
only  to  agriculture.  My  earlier  life  was  that  of  the 
ordinary  farmer’s  boy.  A  single  family  living  half  a 
mile  distant  made  for  us  our  only  society.  One  of  its 
boys  was  my  chum.  We  quarrelled  frequently  but 


12  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


without  weakening  the  bonds  of  friendship.  If  we 
came  to  blows  it  was  only  because  we  were  a  pair  of 
young  animals  and  adopted  that  means  of  becoming 
better  acquainted. 

The  three  older  of  us  children  obtained  most  of  our 
fun  from  sports  of  our  own.  “Three  old  cat”  was  our 
favorite  amusement.  No  baseball  nine  ever  derived 
more  enjoyment  from  their  game  than  we  did  from 
ours.  In  winter  we  “slid  downhill.”  It  was  not  much 
of  a  hill  nor  much  of  a  slide,  but  fulfilled  our  desires  as 
perfectly  as  do  winter  sports  content  pleasure-seekers 
in  Lake  Placid,  Montreal  or  St.  Moritz. 

In  passing  I  want  to  say  that  in  the  corner  of  the  lot 
where  we  did  our  coasting  was  a  garden,  at  the  edge  of 
which  was  a  big  tree,  behind  which,  in  the  immaturity 
of  my  theological  conceptions,  I  located  Adam  and  Eve 
when  attempting  to  conceal  themselves  from  the  Lord. 
I  did  as  an  individual  child  what  the  childhood  of  the 
race  did  when  it  undertook  to  pictorialize  man’s  apos¬ 
tasy.  In  both  cases  the  representation  was  dignified  but 
more  or  less  infantile. 

On  the  Fourth  of  July  I  celebrated  the  anniversary 
of  American  Independence  by  burning  one  bunch  of 
fire-crackers  and  all  my  fingers.  It  was  a  pyrotechnical 
display  in  miniature  but  fully  satisfied  my  patriotic 
ambition  and  contributed  in  its  measure  to  the  glory 
of  George  Washington  and  the  other  revolutionary 

fathers.  my  early  education 

The  circumstances  of  my  upbringing  were  favorable. 
To  my  years  on  the  farm  I  am  deeply  indebted.  The 


EARLY  DAYS 


13 


country  itself  was  an  education  both  for  the  body  and 
the  soul.  It  is  one  thing  to  stand  in  constant  relation 
with  things  that  date  from  ages  past,  and  something 
quite  different  to  be  in  continuous  contact  with  only 
that  which  was  manufactured  yesterday  or  the  day  be¬ 
fore.  The  atmosphere  that  the  city  boy  breathes  is  un¬ 
filtered;  his  sunshine  is  spotted  and  blurred;  his  star¬ 
light  is  dulled  by  dust  and  smoke  which  enter  his  eyes, 
his  brain,  and  his  thinking.  Even  the  rain,  which  be¬ 
comes  a  thing  of  soft  and  liquid  beauty  when  viewed 
over  an  expanse  of  pasture  and  woodland,  becomes 
something  repulsive  when  it  comes  slopping  down  over 
the  roof  of  our  neighbor’s  house  across  the  street. 

As  for  myself,  I  saw  the  river,  the  woods  and  the 
clouds  just  as  God  made  them.  Human  interference 
with  nature  spoils  it,  considered  as  a  revelation  from 
God,  just  as  human  commentaries  vitiate  the  Bible. 
After  one  has  become  adult  it  is  possible  to  be  sub¬ 
jected  to  the  artificialities  of  the  city  without  serious 
detriment,  but  they  make  poor  soil  for  the  nurture  of 
the  young  roots  of  human  life.  It  is  for  that  reason 
that  the  city  would  perish  of  anemia  if  it  had  not  the 
rural  population  to  draw  upon. 

People  themselves  grow  to  be  artificial  by  prolonged 
companionship  with  what  is  not  natural.  They  acquire 
a  quality  of  demeanor  that  camouflages  their  original 
self.  I  would  rather  have  a  boy  uncouth  than  to  have 
him  affected.  I  am  grateful  that  I  began  life  where  I 
could  be  myself  without  incurring  censure,  and  that  I 
lived  there  long  enough  to  have  unaffectedness  become 
a  fixed  element  of  my  constitution. 


14  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


It  was  also  to  my  advantage  that  my  early  years  were 
punctuated  by  no  thrills.  One  day  was  the  same  as  the 
day  before,  and  one  year  for  the  most  part  the  repeti¬ 
tion  of  the  year  previous.  It  was  monotonous,  but  I 
never  realized  it  as  monotony.  I  was  healthy,  and  it 
was  a  pleasure  simply  to  live.  He  is  an  unfortunate 
boy  with  whom  early  years  are  other  than  a  season  of 
vegetating. 

There  were  no  excitements,  therefore  I  did  not  learn 
to  crave  excitement.  Existence  was  itself  a  novelty, 
for,  so  far  as  I  knew,  I  had  never  existed  before.  I 
fell  asleep  as  soon  as  my  head  touched  the  pillow  and 
awoke  with  a  laugh.  It  was  glorious  because  it  was 
natural.  It  was  very  animal,  but  it  fitted  my  quality, 
for  I  was  myself  very  animal.  The  evenness  of  the 
flow  made  it  the  normal  introduction  to  life.  The  most 
wholesome  appetite  is  that  which  finds  satisfaction  in 
unseasoned  food.  The  grown  tree  may  need  the  wind 
and  the  storm  for  its  perfection,  but  while  it  is  a  little 
thing  it  is  the  study  of  its.  protector  to  maintain  it  in 
unmolested  quietude.  One  thrill  every  twenty-four 
hours  is  the  least  that  will  satisfy  the  contemporary 
child,  a  policy  of  treatment  which  is  fitted  to  mar  the 
even  tenor  of  life  and  which  will  bear  fruit  in  queru¬ 
lousness  and  discontent. 

Such  education  as  I  acquired  in  my  first  years  was 
more  a  matter  of  absorption  than  of  infusion.  I  was 
dealt  with  by  my  father  and  mother  upon  the  principle 
that  it  is  as  natural  to  the  normal  mind  to  want  to  know 
as  for  the  stomach  to  want  to  be  fed.  I  do  not  remem¬ 
ber  that  as  a  boy  the  learning  of  any  lesson  was  imposed 


EARLY  DAYS 


15 


upon  me.  The  aptitude  for  knowledge,  natural  to  the 
mind,  was  relied  upon  as  sufficient  impulse. 

I  was  not  sent  to  public  school  till  I  was  twelve,  and 
was  thus  saved  the  fundamental  disadvantage  of  having 
cultivated  in  me  a  distaste  for  knowledge.  I  think  that 
if  I  had  been,  from  the  time  I  was  six  years  old,  sub¬ 
jected  to  the  educational  system  in  vogue,  where  the 
pupil  is  adapted  to  the  curriculum  instead  of  the  cur¬ 
riculum  to  the  pupil,  I  should  have  graduated  into  some 
form  of  industry  upon  completing  the  sixth  grade. 

My  parents,  both  of  whom  were  possessed  of  trained 
intelligence,  not  only  realized  that  no  one  could  under¬ 
stand  the  nature  of  their  own  child  as  well  as  they  could 
themselves,  but  took  the  ground  that  the  initial  steps 
of  a  child’s  education  were  so  determinative  of  future 
mental  tendency  and  ultimate  results,  that  those  steps 
should  be  taken  on  home  ground  and  directed  by  the 
parents  themselves.  For,  as  has  been  already  indicated, 
they  were  very  clear  and  decided  in  their  judgment  that 
parents  existed  not  only  for  the  purpose  of  bringing 
children  into  the  world  but  also  for  the  supplementary 
purpose  of  taking  care  of  them  after  their  arrival. 
Home,  therefore,  was  my  first  school-room,  and  my 
brothers  and  sister  my  schoolmates. 

The  atmosphere  which  I  respired  at  home  was  one 
of  thoughtfulness.  How  large  a  factor  that  was  in  my 
upbringing  I  could  not  realize  till  later.  Undertaking 
to  breathe  in  an  intellectual  vacuum  is  as  devastating  to 
the  mind  as  respiring  an  impoverished  atmosphere  is 
deadening  to  the  body ;  and  there  are  indications  that  in 
the  home  life  of  a  considerable  proportion  of  our  young 


16  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


people  at  present,  vacuity  is  what  they  are  nourished 
upon. 

Our  evenings,  especially  our  winter  evenings,  we 
spent  together  as  a  family.  That  was  our  club.  There 
were  no  theaters  within  fifty  miles  and  no  moving  pic¬ 
tures  anywhere.  Father  and  mother  both  were  too  fine 
to  indulge  in  small  talk,  or  to  gossip  about  our  neigh¬ 
bors,  all  of  whom  wTere  distinguished  by  New  England 
respectability.  There  was  thus  created  in  our  minds  a 
taste  for  what  was  real  as  opposed  to  what  was  ficti¬ 
tious  and  silly,  and  an  impulse  begotten  in  us  to  exer¬ 
cise  our  thoughts  along  elevated  lines. 

Father’s  mind  had  a  decidedly  philosophical  and  the¬ 
ological  bent,  but  he  was  so  clear  and  direct  in  his  think¬ 
ing  and  speaking  that  we  were  quite  early  able  to  “catch 
on’’  to  his  ideas  and  to  think  small  theologies  of  our 
own.  Whether  the  youthful  “fundamentalism”  that 
we  acquired  from  him  made  us  better  children  or  not 
I  do  not  know,  but  it  gave  a  start  to  our  intellectual 
machinery,  and  with  such  influence  exerted  upon  us 
we  could  not  pass  from  the  age  of  eight  or  ten  to  that 
of  sixteen  without  having  our  mental  faculties  wrought 
into  a  condition  of  pronounced  activity. 

All  of  this  laid  a  firm  foundation  for  later  and  more 
methodical  training.  It  introduced  me  to  my  own  in¬ 
telligence,  which  is  something  with  which  the  average 
child  never  becomes  thoroughly  acquainted  which  is 
due  to  no  fault  of  his  own.  Of  course  any  boy  or  girl 
can  pick  up  ideas;  can  repeat  what  others  have  said; 

can  memorize  Sir  Isaac  Newton,  or  even  Aristotle.  So 
*  ' 

can  a  phonograph ;  but  actually  to  think,  to  put  the  mind 


EARLY  DAYS 


17 


on  a  track  of  original  thought  is  distinct  from  memo¬ 
rizing.  Learning  one’s  lesson  may  mean  something  or 
it  may  mean  nothing.  An  idea  may  be  in  my  mind 
without  being  my  idea,  just  as  a  dollar  may  be  in  my 
pocket  without  being  my  dollar. 

So  then  I  began  my  education  at  the  hearthstone. 
My  mind  may  not  have  been  very  much  of  a  mind  but 
it  early  began  in  a  small  and  pretty  distinct  way  to  go 
alone.  Nor  must  I  omit  to  mention  that  we  children 
were  regularly  taken  to  church.  We  were  expected  to 
listen  to  the  preacher  and  to  be  prepared  to  talk  in  a 
sensible  way  about  what  he  said.  I  have  at  this  moment 
a  vivid  impression  of  the  effect  produced  upon  me  by 
a  sermon  I  listened  to  when  I  was  about  ten  years  old 
upon  the  text  “The  hairs  of  your  head  are  all  num¬ 
bered.”  A  great  deal  of  early  New  England  intellec¬ 
tual  sturdiness  was  the  product  of  New  England 
preaching.  We  had  a  two  hours’  service  in  the  morn¬ 
ing;  a  Sunday  school  session,  and  then  an  afternoon 
preaching  service.  The  child  of  today  is  physically 
unequal  to  so  great  a  strain  and  mentally  incapable  of 
being  intellectually  benefited  by  it. 

But  the  fact  is  that  intellectual  stamina  requires  to  be 
earned  and  childhood  is  the  ordained  time  to  begin  to 
earn  it,  and  the  hearthstone  and  the  sanctuary  are  the 
places  where  the  earning  process  is  appointed  of  God 
to  begin.  All  of  which  means  that  I  was  “brought  up” 
and  did  not  “come  up.”  It  is  no  credit  to  me.  The 
praise  is  all  due  to  God  and  to  my  father  and  mother. 

If  before  I  was  born  I  had  had  an  opportunity  to 
state  my  preference  as  to  birthplace  and  parentage,  I 


18  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


should — had  I  my  present  understanding  of  condi¬ 
tions — have  asked  to  be  born  somewhere  in  the  Eastern 
States  and  in  a  farmer’s  family.  Under  such  condi¬ 
tions  there  is  very  little  opportunity  for  any  kind  of 
foolishness  and  no  likelihood  of  disqualifying  and  de¬ 
bilitating  luxury.  It  is  not  an  elegant  life,  but  a  rigid 
one  that  calls  for  hard  work  and  straight  thinking. 
Superficiality  is  inflexibly  ruled  out.  It  is  prosaic 
rather  than  poetic.  It  gives  thorough  schooling  in 
reality.  It  steadily  accustoms  the  mind  to  the  disci¬ 
pline  of  hard  facts.  I  have  for  five  years  preached 
to  that  kind  of  congregation  and  I  know  its  quality. 
Farmers  do  not  think  fast  but  they  think  straight. 
They  are  rather  apt  to  be  orthodox,  for  they  have  a  dis¬ 
taste  for  camouflage.  Their  constant  contact  is  with 
nature’s  forces,  which  can  be  neither  resisted  nor  bribed. 
It  might  be  to  public  advantage  if  more  of  the  responsi¬ 
bility  borne  by  Congress  could  be  carried  by  members 
of  their  class  even  at  the  expense  of  retaining  at  home 
a  corresponding  number  of  capitalists  and  members  of 
the  legal  profession.  A  straight  thought,  like  a  straight 
line,  measures  the  shortest  distance  between  any  two 
points. 

I  have  remarked  that  all  the  study  that  I  did  at  home 
was  done  voluntarily.  I  can  go  further  and  say  that  it 
was  done  not  as  work  but  as  play.  The  intellectual  and 
the  emotional  cooperate.  There  is  involved  in  this  a 
psychological  principle  which  few  parents  and  hardly 
any  school  teachers  appreciate  as  my  parents  appreci¬ 
ated  it.  Feeling  is  thought’s  lubricator.  The  mechanic 
oils  the  drill  with  which  he  bores  into  metal.  A  lesson 


EARLY  DAYS 


19 


which,  reluctantly  learned,  will  give  a  boy  a  headache, 
learned  enjoy  ably  will  be  as  much  a  diversion  as  a  game 
of  marbles.  Hearts  are  given  us  not  for  ornament  but 
for  service.  A  few  days  ago  I  met  on  the  street  a 
bright-looking  lad  with  a  big  pack  of  books  under  his 
arm,  evidently  on  his  way  from  school.  I  stopped  him 
and  said,  “Do  you  go  to  school?”  “Yes,  sir,”  was  his 
polite  reply.  “Do  you  like  going  to  school?”  said  I. 
“No,  sir,  I  hate  it,”  he  answered.  There  was  a  boy 
who,  as  was  evident  from  his  countenance,  was  very 
liberally  possessed  of  intellectual  possibilities,  but  who 
was  having  those  possibilities  systematically  wrecked  at 
public  expense. 

In  my  home,  study  was  so  conducted  as  to  be  one  of 
my  amusements.  My  mother,  while  looking  after  the 
household  and  running  a  dairy,  arranged  for  me  a  set 
of  cards  for  the  acquirement  of  the  multiplication  table; 
and  to  run  through  those  cards  from  2x2  to  12  x  12, 
forward  and  backward,  was  one  of  my  games.  That 
is  simply  a  sample  of  the  way  in  which  I  got  started  in 
my  education.  Reading  and  spelling  were  dealt  with  in 
a  way  that  was  similarly  entertaining.  My  father  gave 
me  an  equal  treat  in  teaching  me  English  grammar. 
We  spent  together  an  hour  a  day  for  two  months 
“parsing”  passages  in  Pollock’s  “Course  of  Time.” 
That  was  all  the  English  grammar  I  ever  studied. 
Those  two  months  are  today,  after  seventy  years,  a 
delightful  memory.  There  is  a  pleasant  way  of  doing 
things  and  an  exasperating  way  of  not  doing  them. 
Committing  to  memory  lessons  in  grammatical  analysis 
is  an  example  of  the  latter.  Hearing  good  English 


20  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


spoken  and  seeing  good  English  written  and  printed  is 
an  example  of  the  former,  and  to  give  pupils  a  liberal 
opportunity  to  hear  and  see  is  one  of  the  teacher’s 
responsibilities. 

OUTLOOK  ON  THE  FUTURE 

Having  been  born  a  farmer’s  son,  I  should  naturally 
have  followed  the  same  employment.  But,  however 
appealing  the  pursuit  of  agriculture  may  be  under  cer¬ 
tain  conditions  there  is  nothing  stimulating  in  cultivat¬ 
ing  such  ground  as  composes  most  of  the  farming  area 
of  New  England,  where  in  order  to  drop  a  kernel  of 
corn  one  must  first  unearth  a  stone  or  blast  out  a  rock 
to  make  a  place  for  it.  Brought  up  in  the  atmosphere 
that  I  was,  it  would  have  been  against  nature  that  I 
should  turn  to  the  soil  as  a  sphere  of  life-interest,  how¬ 
ever  appreciative  of  the  obligation  pressing  upon  our 
country  to  see  that  its  agricultural  interests  are  well 
served.  For  agriculture  is  the  physical  basis  of  all 
civilization.  It  stands  to  civilization  as  the  body  stands 
to  the  soul.  The  body  is  not  the  most  aristocratic  ele¬ 
ment  of  our  human  composition  and  we  cannot  forget 
that  agriculture  derives  its  dividends  from  dirt.  At 
the  same  time  working  the  soil  is  the  great  original 
art.  Human  progress  is  conditional  upon  the  faithful 
cultivation  of  that  art,  and  it  devolves  upon  govern¬ 
ment  to  give  considerate  attention  and  encouragement 
to  the  farming  interest;  to  treat  that  interest  with  the 
respect  due  to  the  critical  relation  it  sustains  to  the 
national  weal;  to  do  all  that  can  constitutionally  and 
discreetly  be  done  to  attract  young  men  from  the  city 


EARLY  DAYS 


21 


and  back  to  the  soil;  to  place  upon  uncultivated  por¬ 
tions  of  our  country  newly  arrived  immigrants  coming 
from  agricultural  districts  abroad;  and  furthermore  to 
foster  in  remoter  parts  of  our  country  the  maintenance 
of  those  educational  opportunities,  which  shall  afford 
to  the  children,  growing  up  there,  means  of  culture  as 
nearly  as  possible  on  a  grade  with  those  supplied  in 
the  cities  and  large  towns. 

When  I  was  about  twelve  years  the  question  of  my 
being  a  farmer  was  abruptly  settled  by  my  father’s 
disposing  of  his  property,  moving  his  family  elsewhere 
and  taking  a  position  more  compatible  with  his  temper¬ 
ament  and  tastes.  The  next  four  years  I  was  allowed 
to  go  to  school  one  term  out  of  every  three,  which  was 
sufficient  to  keep  me  abreast  of  my  classmates,  not  be¬ 
cause  I  was  any  brighter  than  they,  but  because  from 
having  attended  school  ever  since  they  were  infants 
their  powers  of  acquisition  had  become  enfeebled  and 
their  appetite  for  knowledge  surfeited. 

One  of  my  teachers  was  a  Mrs.  Carpenter.  She  was 
certainly  an  artist  in  her  line.  She  demonstrated  with 
a  woman,  whom  God  constructed  with  a  view  to  mak¬ 
ing  a  teacher  of  her,  can  do  in  the  way  of  developing 
latent  possibilities,  possibilities  even  of  the  dullest.  She 
could  make  the  blind  see  and  the  dumb  speak.  Those 
who  instruct  in  grammar  schools  and  high  schools 
sometimes  complain  that  such  instruction  is  not  recog¬ 
nized  as  a  profession,  like  law,  medicine  and  theology. 
The  dignity  will  doubtless  be  accorded  as  fast  as  it  is 
deserved.  There  is  one  particularly  pleasant  act  of 
Mrs.  Carpenter’s  that  I  have  remembered  of  her  all 


22  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


these  years,  which  shows  the  delicacy  of  her  tact  and 
her  ability  to  hurt  without  bruising.  I  had  a  composi¬ 
tion  to  write.  Upon  showing  it  to  her  she  said, — “That 
is  a  very  well  written  composition,  Charlie,  only  I 
would  begin  each  line  with  a  small  letter  instead  of 
with  a  capital.’ ’  It  stung  me,  but  I  pulled  out  the  sting 
before  it  had  time  to  produce  inflammation:  but  I  have 
never  written  a  line  of  blank  verse  or  of  poetry  since. 
That  was  about  the  year  1856. 

When  I  was  nearly  sixteen  my  father  put  me  into 
a  grocery  store  to  sell  sugar,  molasses  and  codfish,  an 
experience  that  was  distasteful  but  to  which  I  recon¬ 
ciled  myself  by  the  consideration  that  it  was  a  part  of 
my  education,  that  there  is  nothing  which  a  man  can 
know  that  will  not  sometime  stand  him  in  good  stead; 
and  by  the  fact  that  Henry  Clay,  when  a  boy,  was  put 
upon  the  same  job  by  his  stepfather. 

The  author  of  “The  Americanization  of  Edward 
Bok”  emphasizes  the  fact,  and  was  himself  an  illustra¬ 
tion  of  the  fact, — that  any  respectable  work  to  which 
a  man  faithfully  applies  himself  puts  him  in  the  line  of 
promotion:  and  I  had  not  been  selling  groceries  more 
than  two  months  before  I  was  given  a  place  in  a  dry 
goods  store.  Selling  groceries  to  men  was  not  as  try¬ 
ing  to  the  disposition  as  selling  dry  goods  to  women, 
not  half  of  whom  knew  what  they  wanted  even  when 
I  pointed  it  out  to  them.  Shopping  betrays  certain  ten¬ 
dencies  of  the  female  mind  not  likely  to  be  displayed 
otherwise,  and  the  patience  of  the  man  behind  the 
counter  will  be  developed  if  his  inward  equipment  is 
adequate  to  the  situation.  The  principal  gain  resulting 


EARLY  DAYS 


23 


from  the  two  years  that  I  spent  as  salesman  was  a  small 
addition  to  the  family  exchequer  and  time  for  the  de¬ 
liberate  shaping  of  plans  for  the  future,  for  I  would  no 
more  be  a  merchant  than  I  would  be  a  farmer. 

Important  decisions  cannot  be  made.  They  are  a 
growth  and  require  to  ripen;  and  that  means  time.  In 
critical  matters  impulsive  conclusions  are  usually  fatal 
and  have  to  be  repented  of.  To  a  young  man  ques¬ 
tioning  what  shall  be  his  future  and  what  shall  he  make 
of  himself,  I  always  say, — bring  together  all  the  ele¬ 
ments  that  can  have  any  bearing  upon  the  question  and 
leave  them  to  fight  it  out  among  themselves.  If  mud¬ 
died  water  be  allowed  to  stand  awhile  the  impure  in¬ 
gredients  will  settle  to  the  bottom  and  leave  clear  water. 
Having  followed  that  prescription  in  my  own  case  I 
felt  free  to  recommend  it  to  others.  If  one  has  a  se¬ 
rious  desire  to  become  what  he  was  intended  to  become, 
he  may  expect  to  arrive  at  his  destination,  if  he  will 
follow  the  drift  of  events  and  not  interfere  too  much 
with  the  way  that  drift  is  conveying  him.  This  is 
sound  doctrine  whether  it  be  designated  as  fatalism  or 
Divine  Sovereignty. 

A  long  time  ago,  so  long  that  I  cannot  tell  when  it 
was,  there  fell  into  my  hands  a  little  book  entitled 
“Trench  on  the  Study  of  Words.”  It  was  not  much  of 
a  book  and  made  no  pretensions  to  being  scientific,  but 
it  made  clear  to  me  what  Emerson  meant  when,  in  one 
of  his  essays,  he  said  that  “language  is  fossil  poetry.” 
At  that  impulse  I  had  taken  up  Latin  in  the  high  school 
and  resumed  my  study  of  it  after  I  had  been  a  month 
or  two  in  the  dry  goods  store.  But  my  employer  was 


24  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


so  jealous  of  any  interest  I  showed  in  what  was  not 
immediately  connected  with  dry  goods  that  I  had  to 
proceed  clandestinely  and  give  my  Latin  a  chance  either 
while  he  was  absent  at  dinner  or  before  he  arrived  in 
the  morning,  while  I  was  opening  the  store,  attending 
to  the  fires  and  sweeping  out.  By  watching  one’s 
chance  one  can  sometimes  carry  along  what  he  wants 
to  do  at  the  same  time  that  he  is  faithfully  carrying 
along  what  he  has  to  do. 

There  was  a  little  niche  in  the  wall  where  I  seques¬ 
tered  my  “Andrew’s  and  Stoddard’s  Latin  Grammar,” 
a  textbook  now  quite  out  of  use,  upon  which  Herbert 
Spencer  discharged  the  vials  of  his  wrath,  as  my  em¬ 
ployer  would  have  done  had  he  realized  the  situation. 
Nevertheless,  by  watching  my  chance  I  learned  that 
book  from  cover  to  cover,  declensions  and  conjuga¬ 
tions,  verbs  regular  and  irregular,  rules  and  exceptions, 
syntax,  prosody,  everything,  and  if  the  plates  from 
which  the  book  was  printed  should  have  been  de¬ 
stroyed  I  could  nearly  have  reproduced  it.  That  was 
a  rather  definite  step  taken  in  the  direction  of  my  unsus¬ 
pected  destiny,  a  movement  forward  of  the  drift  that 
was  carrying  me  to  the  desire  and  then  to  the  purpose 
of  taking  a  college  course. 

I  was  not  settling  any  remote  questions  but  simply 
keeping  in  the  middle  of  the  river  and  letting  the  river 
convoy  me.  What  a  college  education  would  lead  on  to, 
my  parents  did  not  know.  I  did  not  know.  What  might 
be  beyond  college  graduation  was  not  my  problem. 

I  simply  concentrated  on  a  good  college  fit.  It  was  to 
my  advantage  that  my  plans  extended  no  farther.  Too 


EARLY  DAYS 


25 


much  plan  may  embarrass  a  man’s  future  Some  one 
speaking  in  Mr.  Beecher’s  presence  said  that  “A  young 
fellow  who  has  reached  the  age  of  seventeen  without 
knowing  what  he  is  going  to  make  of  his  life  is  a 
ruined  man  already.”  To  which  Mr.  Beecher  re¬ 
torted, — “A  man  who  is  not  more  than  seventeen  but 
who  has  decided  what  his  life’s  work  is  to  be,  is  a 
ruined  man  already.” 

The  majority  of  failures  are  due  to  lack  of  deliberate 
preparation.  There  is  only  one  time  during  the  erec¬ 
tion  of  a  building  when  the  foundation  can  be  laid,  and 
that  is  before  the  superstructure  has  been  put  on.  Ac¬ 
cording  to  ordinary  calculation  our  Lord  lived  thirty- 
three  years  and  all  the  work  that  he  did  was  accom¬ 
plished  in  the  last  three,  with  ten  times  that  number 
spent  in  preparation;  and  of  what  was  achieved  in  the 
last  three  no  one  criticises  either  the  quantity  or  the 
quality.  The  grammar  school  teacher  to  whom  I  have 
already  referred,  told  me  that  if  she  had  a  problem  to 
solve  and  her  life  depended  upon  its  solution  within 
five  minutes,  she  would  devote  half  of  the  allowed  time 
to  deciding  upon  the  most  speedy  method  of  procedure. 
It  cannot  be  forgotten  that  there  are  conditions  under 
which  prolonged  preparation  for  life’s  work  may  be 
impossible.  Financial  limitations  may  be  prohibitive; 
but,  with  no  similar  obstacle  to  be  confronted,  the  man 
who  hurries  to  occupy  his  chosen  sphere  of  activity, 
when  by  reasonable  delay  he  might  enter  it  substantially 
qualified,  does  himself  irreparable  injustice  and  pre¬ 
pares  the  way  for  unnecessary  failure  or  at  least  for 
no  more  than  an  apologetic  success. 


26  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


PREPARATION  FOR  COLLEGE 

My  preparation  for  college  was  undertaken  by  a  little 
man  who  conducted  an  institute  in  a  town  so  near  my 
home  as  to  be  easily  accessible.  Because  of  being  an 
Amherst  graduate  he  was  regarded  with  favor  by  my 
father,  who  was  a  firm  believer  in  Amherst. 

I  call  him  a  little  man  because  diminutiveness  was 
his  general  characteristic  both  outwardly  and  inwardly. 
Learning  was  not  becoming  to  him.  He  was  one  of 
that  considerable  class  that  are  cheapened  by  cultiva¬ 
tion.  He  knew  a  great  deal  and  could  tell  me  a  great 
many  things  that  I  did  not  know,  but  so  can  a  cyclo¬ 
pedia.  There  was  about  him  a  touch  of  effeminacy 
which  he  camouflaged  by  an  assumption  of  dignity  that 
was  not  natural  to  him.  He  was  a  pedagogue  rather 
than  an  instructor.  He  did  not  teach  me,  he  simply 
heard  me  recite  my  lessons;  and  as  I  generally  knew 
them,  and  as  after  I  had  told  him  what  I  knew  he  added 
nothing  of  what  he  knew,  I  went  home  as  wise  as  I 
came;  all  of  which  was  at  the  expense  of  three  hours 
of  time,  six  miles  of  travel  (on  foot)  and  tuition  fee. 

His  sense  of  responsibility  extended  no  further  than 
to  delivering  me  up  at  the  end  of  two  years  in  a  condi¬ 
tion  to  pass  the  college  examination;  to  the  storing 
away  in  me  of  a  quantum  sufficit  of  mathematical  and 
linguistic  information.  As  to  the  influence  to  be 
exerted  upon  life  by  what  I  acquired  from  him  he  had 
nothing  to  say.  Life  meant  no  more  to  me  after  I  had 
been  with  him  two  years  than  it  meant  before.  I  was 
no  more  of  a  man  when  I  left  him  than  when  I  came 


EARLY  DAYS 


27 


to  him.  His  institute  had  no  effect  in  loading  the  future 
with  a  richer  significance.  He  fostered  in  me  no  ambi¬ 
tion  to  live,  grow  up  and  make  my  mark  in  the  world. 
It  was  with  him  a  matter  only  of  more  or  less  Greek, 
Latin  and  Mathematics. 

Having  myself  taught  in  a  “fitting”  school,  I  under¬ 
stand  now  the  narrow  groove  in  which  the  teacher  in 
such  an  institution  is  liable  to  confine  himself.  He  is 
hired  and  paid  for  getting  his  boys  past  the  board  of 
college  examiners.  Even  that  is  considerable  of  an 
undertaking,  and  leaves  him  with  only  a  limited  amount 
of  surplus  energy  to  be  expended  otherwise.  The  situ¬ 
ation  in  a  fitting  school  does  not  differ  materially  from 
what  one  encounters  in  any  system  of  graded  common 
schools,  where  the  teacher, — under  the  conditions 
which  at  present  exist, — is  almost  compelled  to  feel  her 
entire  obligation  fulfilled  by  being  able  to  advance  the 
members  of  her  class  into  the  next  grade  at  the  end 
of  the  year.  Considered  as  a  scheme  for  developing 
manhood  and  womanhood  such  an  educational  system 
is  a  great  way  removed  from  the  ideal,  for  while  it 
may  discipline  intellectually  it  affords  little  impulse  to 
character. 

My  stay  at  the  institute  terminated  in  1862.  The 
Civil  War  was  then  in  progress,  but  exemption  from 
military  service  on  account  of  nearsightedness,  left  me 
free  to  enter  upon  my  college  course  and  I  repaired  to 
Amherst  for  my  entrance  examination. 


CHAPTER  II 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 

Amherst  was  representative  of  the  old  New  England 
traditions ;  in  that  respect  like  Williams  and  Dartmouth. 
It  was  satisfied  to  be  simply  a  college  quite  untouched 
by  university  aspirations.  It  tried  only  to  fit  a  man 
for  life  with  no  subsidiary  ambitions  to  fit  him  for  any 
special  aspect  of  life.  Naturally  therefore  it  presented 
to  the  student  a  fixed  curriculum  unseasoned  by  op¬ 
tional,  it  being  considered  that  mature  instructors  were 
better  qualified  than  raw  boys  to  determine  what  course 
of  instruction  was  best  qualified  to  develop  solid  and 
symmetrical  culture. 

It  was  at  that  time  a  working  institution.  No  stu¬ 
dent  was  afraid  of  being  known  as  a  “dig.”  To  stand 
low  in  one’s  class  was  felt  as  a  disgrace.  Reputation 
was  also  on  the  side  of  manly  and  gentlemanly  be¬ 
havior.  We  were  not  all  saints,  but  disreputable  con¬ 
duct  was  not  sufficiently  frequent  to  vary  the  monotony. 

The  only  spots  that  the  faculty  regarded  with  sus¬ 
picion  and  disfavor  were  “Polly’s”  and  Northampton. 
Smith  College  at  Northampton  had  not  then  been 
founded.  Its  life  commenced  about  the  time  I  gradu¬ 
ated,  which  was  in  ’66.  It  is  now  a  sort  of  annex  to 
the  college  at  Amherst,  with  which  it  is  connected  by 
trolley  and  steam-car  facilities.  Mount  Holyoke  Fe- 

28 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


29 


male  Seminary,  which  has  since  become  a  college  and 
was  then  known  as  the  Ministers  Rib-factory,  was  not 
particularly  seductive  to  the  students ;  although  they  all 
knew  that  the  route  to  that  resort  led  through  the 
“Notch,”  which  was  occasionally  traversed  by  a  fresh¬ 
man  who  felt  the  loneliness  of  being  separated  from 
home  and  consoled  himself  by  spending  Saturday  after¬ 
noon  with  his  sister. 

Amherst  at  that  time  had  no  athletics;  at  least  none 
to  speak  of.  We  had  a  gymnasium  in  which  we  were 
required  to  spend  half  an  hour  five  days  in  the  week 
under  the  training  of  the  professor  of  physical  culture. 
It  was  considered  that  a  college  like  Amherst  existed 
for  the  purpose  of  developing  mentality,  and  that 
physical  discipline  was  an  intrusion  except  so  far  as  it 
contributed  to  that  development.  We  were  therefore 
spared  that  invasion  upon  the  scholarly  repose  of  col¬ 
lege  life  incident  to  intercollegiate  games  which  neces¬ 
sarily  reduce  the  community  to  a  condition  of  impas¬ 
sioned  upset. 

If  we  had  less  athletics  than  is  the  present  vogue  we 
had  more  religion  than  is  now  cultivated  in  some  of  our 
colleges  both  male  and  female.  Until  comparatively 
recently  the  President  of  Amherst  has,  without  excep¬ 
tion  I  believe,  been  a  clergyman.  That  in  itself  may 
not  signify  very  much,  and  yet  it  is  a  kind  of  confession 
of  faith.  It  stamps  the  college  as  an  institution  existing 
and  maintained  under  Christian  auspices.  It  is  a  way 
that  it  has  of  showing  its  colors.  It  is  a  confession  of 
loyalty  to  the  past  and  to  the  religious  spirit  at  whose 
impulses  the  college  was  originally  founded.  Amherst 


30  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


College,  for  example,  was  established  with  a  special 
view  to  educating  young  men  for  the  ministry.  It  in¬ 
volved  the  recognition  of  the  fact  that  the  perfection 
of  manhood  is  not  a  matter  of  intellectuality  alone  but 
a  happy  combination  of  intellectual,  moral  and  religious 
ingredients.  The  more  complete  a  man’s  unaccom¬ 
panied  intellectual  development,  the  greater  his  capacity 
for  mischief  as  well  as  for  benefit.  Hallowed  intelli¬ 
gence  is  what  Amherst  during  the  long  past  of  its  his¬ 
tory  has  been  laboring  for. 

The  religious  influence  exerted  upon  students  has 
this  also  to  be  said  to  its  credit,  that  it  tends  to  counter¬ 
act  the  withering,  desiccating  effect  of  prolonged  intel¬ 
lectual  effort.  This  was  subsequently  brought  home 
to  me  in  a  very  practical  way  as  will  be  noted  further 
on.  The  ordinary  college  curriculum  neglects  the  emo¬ 
tional  nature.  To  learn  lessons  and  to  recite  them  three 
times  a  day  for  four  years  is  very  unlikely  to  have  as 
its  effect  the  quickening  of  emotive  impulses.  Scrip¬ 
ture  says  that  it  is  out  of  the  heart  that  are  the  issues 
of  life.  The  phrase  is  not  only  good  Scripture;  it  is 
also  good  psychology.  The  culture  of  the  mind  will 
make  us  masters  of  truth  and  furnish  us  with  the  means 
of  intellectual  achievement,  but  is  powerless  to  foster 
the  impulses  constraining  to  the  practical  and  efficient 
use  of  those  means.  Knowledge  is  power;  knowledge 
is  fuel;  but  waits  for  its  enkindling  before  it  becomes 
productive  enginery.  An  educated  man  may  be  a  very 
dead  man  so  far  as  concerns  substantial  effects,  while 
small  learning  suffused  with  passion  may  go  a  very 
long  way. 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


31 


It  is  not  easy  to  see  how  a  college  course  can  supply 
this  element  of  efficiency,  but  it  is  perfectly  easy  to  see 
that  it  is  an  element  that  has  entered  into  the  accom¬ 
plishment  of  all  the  best  work  that  has  ever  lain  along 
any  exalted  line  of  achievement.  For  we  know  that  all 
the  best  thoughts  in  the  world,  into  however  frosty  a 
form  they  may  since  have  become  chilled,  were  moulded 
from  metal  that  was  once  molten.  Geology  claims  that 
the  world  began  hot.  So  every  thought  that  has  had 
a  history  began  as  a  passion.  What  is  true  of  thought 
is  equally  true  of  art.  Art  is  enthusiasm  taken  shape. 
The  grand  cathedrals  are  old  pulse-beats.  The  master- 
paintings, — and  they  are  all  religious, — are  holy,  me¬ 
dieval  passion  thrown  upon  canvas.  The  same  prin¬ 
ciple  holds  when  we  skip  from  art  to  ethics.  Morality 
to  be  safe  must  be  impassioned.  No  man  can  be  con¬ 
fidently  counted  upon  to  do  right  till  he  does  it  at  the 
impulse  of  a  warm  motive  working  from  within.  The 
principle  holds  also  in  original  theology.  We  cannot 
read  one  of  St.  Paul’s  Epistles  without  realizing  that 
it  was  struck  out  at  a  white  heat.  His  sentences  are 
passionate.  His  grammar  in  some  cases  breaks  down 
under  the  weight  of  what  he  tried  to  load  upon  it.  The 
links  in  the  chain  of  his  argument  are  melted  asunder 
by  the  fervor  of  the  temperature  under  which  he  under¬ 
takes  to  weld  them.  That  is  the  way  that  theology  was 
made  1800  years  ago.  Only  it  was  not  thought  of  as 
theology.  We  never  begin  to  call  religious  truth  the¬ 
ology  till  the  warm  blood  that  was  in  it  has  commenced 
to  cool  and  to  coagulate,  just  as  we  never  think  of 
anatomy  till  it  is  a  dead  body  we  are  handling.  The- 


32  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


ology  is  a  precipitate  from  an  old,  intense  religious 
experience.  All  the  theology  that  is  in  the  Church 
today  is  in  the  Epistles,  but  it  is  not  there  as  theology. 
So  all  the  bone-dust  that  is  in  the  graveyards  today  was 
once  in  society  but  it  was  not  there  as  bone-dust. 

Mechanics  is  not  art.  Patching  is  not  creating.  Doc¬ 
toring  is  not  regenerating.  Intellect  is  not  vision.  Cal¬ 
culation  is  not  inspiration.  History  is  not  administered 
by  experts.  It  is  heart  that  composes  the  basis  of 
civilization  and  of  Christianity.  “God  so  loved  the 
world.”  The  moving  energy  in  the  world’s  history 
is  not  a  philosophy  but  a  Cross.  And  the  consummat¬ 
ing  act  by  which  Christ  fitted  the  Church  for  its  work 
was  not  the  founding  of  a  university  but  the  baptism 
of  the  church  with  the  spirit  and  with  fire. 

While  collegiate  training  is  being  strenuously  pushed 
along  intellectual  lines,  there  are  indications  that,  in 
some  of  our  colleges,  the  moral  and  religious  features 
are  having  laid  upon  them  a  diminished  emphasis.  As 
those  who  are  chieftains  of  events  and  the  shapers  of 
our  history,  are  largely  college  graduates,  and  as  our 
civilization,  in  order  to  permanence,  depends  upon  the 
prevalence  of  a  high  standard  of  character,  there  is 
evident  need  of  the  maintenance  in  our  colleges  of  a 
quality  which  is  not  guaranteed  by  pure  intellectualism. 
To  discipline  a  student  in  Latin*,  Greek,  Mathematics, 
Psychology,  etc.,  will  furnish  him  with  mental  caliber, 
but  caliber  is  an  efficiency  that  can  be  used  either  con¬ 
structively  or  destructively.  It  may  enable  a  man  to 
become  an  effective  patriot  or  an  effective  traitor.  It 
may  be  an  instrument  in  the  hands  of  an  Alexander 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


33 


Hamilton  or  a  weapon  in  the  hands  of  a  Trotsky  or  a 
Lenin.  Fire  may  serve  a  beneficent  purpose  by  warm¬ 
ing  the  hearthstone,  or  the  same  fire  may  burn  down 
the  house.  It  is  a  great  mistake  to  suppose  that  our 
system  of  American  schools  and  colleges  ensures  the 
perpetuity  of  our  institutions.  When  therefore  there 
are  afforded  some  indications  that  our  advanced  insti¬ 
tutions  of  learning  are  crowding  brain  culture  to  the 
disadvantage  of  the  schooling  of  the  soul  and  the  con¬ 
science,  there  is  some  occasion  for  solicitude. 

It  was  during  my  college  course  that  the  student 
body  had  an  outbreak  of  cerebro-spinal  meningitis.  It 
attacked  only  a  limited  number  at  the  outset,  but  after 
the  attendant  physician  had  recommended  the  liberal 
use  of  whiskey  as  an  antidotal  expedient,  it  spread 
rapidly  through  the  entire  college  till  the  number  in¬ 
fected  included  so  large  a  proportion  of  the  students 
that  the  faculty  decided  to  omit  the  usual  term  ex¬ 
aminations.  As  soon  after  this  decision  was  reached 
as  seemed  expedient,  the  tide  of  invalidism  commenced 
to  ebb,  and  by  the  end  of  the  term  we  were  all  so  thor¬ 
oughly  recovered  as  to  be  able  to  go  home  for  our 
vacation  without  any  likelihood  of  relapse. 

Nothing  out  of  the  ordinary  occurred  during  my 
four  years  at  Amherst.  Of  whatever  irregularities  I 
may  have  been  guilty  I  was  only  once  called  before  the 
President  who, — the  gentleman  that  he  was,— at  once 
excused  me  after  I  had  told  him  how  deeply  impressed 
I  had  been  by  some  pertinent  remarks  he  had  recently 
made  before  the  student  body  in  chapel.  I  learned  all 
my  lessons,  for  I  was  what  is  technically  known  as  a 


34  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


“dig,”  and  stood  well  in  my  class  at  the  end  of  the 
course.  I  had  absented  myself  from  college  two  half- 
terms  in  order  to  teach  some  little  fledglings  their  letters 
in  primary  school,  some  of  whom  were  marvellously 
alert  in  the  absorption  of  knowledge  and  a  larger 
number  showing  an  equal  genius  for  the  resistance  of 
knowledge. 

I  graduated  at  the  age  of  twenty-four.  That  was 
later  than  the  average  age  of  graduation;  but  none  too 
late, — better  late  than  earlier  for  there  are  certain 
branches  of  study  which  are  certain  to  be  taken  up  near 
the  close  of  the  course,  which  are  of  such  character 
as  to  fail  of  being  appreciated  by  any  student  who 
has  not  attained  to  a  considerable  degree  of  mental 
maturity. 

The  fact  that  I  had  not  even  a  rudimentary  plan  of 
life-work  did  not  distress  me,  for  there  seemed  a  prob¬ 
ability  of  my  living  a  goodly  number  of  years,  and  half 
a  dozen  more  or  less  of  watchful  waiting  would  make 
no  great  difference  in  the  end,  provided  I  was  usefully 
occupied  in  the  meantime.  In  senior  year  I  had  offered 
me  a  productive  scholarship  provided  I  would  enroll 
myself  as  candidate  for  the  ministry.  I  should  have 
prized  the  scholarship  but  not  on  the  appended  condi¬ 
tion,  for  while  I  might  be  drifting  toward  the  ministry 
I  had  not  drifted  to  it. 

That  word  “drift”  stands  for  a  doctrine  which  fills 
a  large  place  in  my  system  of  philosophy  and  theology. 
It  means  to  me  that  if  we  keep  in  the  middle  of  the 
current  and  are  not  the  slaves  of  our  own  willfulness 
and  perversity,  we  shall  proceed  with  a  wisdom  which 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


35 


is  not  of  our  own  wisdom  or  consciousness  and  be 
borne  along  uncalculatingly  in  the  direction  of  our  des¬ 
tiny.  It  is  a  Christian  doctrine  and  an  exceedingly 
comfortable  one,  and  means  the  possibility  of  working 
more  wisely  than  we  know. 

What  I  have  called  drift  is  identical  with  what  in 
the  operations  of  nature  we  call  instinct.  For  ex¬ 
ample,  certain  birds  when  the  migratory  season  arrives, 
fly  South.  There  is  a  reason  for  their  flying  but  it  is 
not  their  reason.  They  act  with  an  intelligence  which 
is  not  their  own  intelligence.  So  the  honey-bee  in  the 
cunning  shaping  of  its  cell.  To  call  it  instinct  explains 
nothing.  The  word  simply  states  that  the  bee,  which 
is  not  a  geometrician,  behaves  just  as  it  would,  were  it 
a  geometrician. 

We  can  extend  the  application  of  this  principle  by 
saying  that  if  there  is  such  a  thing  as  the  science  of 
history  and  if  history  can  be  said  to  develop  at  all  along 
rational  lines,  it  is  because  the  makers  of  history  while 
incapable  of  appreciating  their  individual  relations  to 
the  final  outcome  of  events,  shape  their  conduct  with  a 
foresight  of  which  they  are  personally  insensible. 

Cherishing  such  a  view  of  the  world  of  natural  and 
human  event  it  cannot  be  thought  strange  that  I  went 
on  living  with  no  disturbing  anxiety  as  to  what  I  was 
for,  if  for  anythin g,  how  long  it  would  be  before  I 
should  discover,  or  the  steps  still  to  be  taken  that  would 
conduct  to  that  discovery. 


36  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


MY  EXPERIENCE  AS  SCHOOL  TEACHER 

Shortly  after  graduation  I  took  charge  of  the  Am¬ 
herst  High  School.  As  the  position  was  thrown  in  my 
way,  and  nothing  else  offered,  I  reasoned  that  it  was  the 
proper  thing  to  accept  it.  Preferment  comes  to  those 
who  are  already  occupied,  not  to  such  as  decline  what 
is  given  them  because  it  does  not  accord  with  their 
taste  and  ambition.  I  took  the  place  expecting  it  to 
be  a  means  of  educating  myself  while  purposing  to  do 
what  I  could  in  the  way  of  educating  the  members  of 
my  charge. 

What  makes  any  position  of  instruction  in  the  public 
schools  irksome  is  that  the  teacher  is  obliged  to  work 
under  rigidly  prescribed  methods.  Originality  is  for¬ 
bidden.  The  teacher  is  told  not  only  what  he  must 
teach  but  how  he  must  teach  it  and  how  much  and 
exactly  what  kind  of  results  he  must  secure.  Young 
minds,  even  of  the  same  age,  differ  from  each  other  in 
development  and  in  facility  of  development,  but  require 
to  be  dealt  with  as  though  they  had  all  been  cast  in  the 
same  mould. 

I  had  a  class  in  Latin  and  ventured  to  instruct  it  in  a 
way  that  was  somewhat  my  own.  One  day  while  I 
had  the  class  on  the  floor  the  school  was  visited  by  a 
commissioner  of  education,  who  called  on  a  spying  ex¬ 
cursion.  He  disapproved  of  my  method.  Knowing 
that  there  was  no  likelihood  of  his  repeating  his  visit 
I  continued  the  error  of  my  ways,  for  the  class  fell  in 
heartily  with  the  way  I  took  to  interest  them  and  I 
was  able  by  means  of  it  to  smuggle  into  their  minds  a 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


37 


little  classic  information  that  they  would  have  resented 
if  presented  in  the  traditional  method.  If  any  one  has 
a  device  for  making  Latin  interesting  to  beginners  he 
ought  to  be  encouraged  to  employ  it. 

The  second  year  was  the  first  year  over  again,  the 
only  change  being  the  substitution  of  a  new  class.  It 
is  that  element  of  routine  that  makes  teaching  in  public 
schools  monotonous.  It  is  like  walking  in  a  treadmill, 
always  going  but  never  arriving.  It  produces  in  time 
what  we  know  as  the  pedagogical  manner  and  the 
pedagogical  face.  It  is  a  continual  draft  on  life’s  juices 
with  no  device  discovered  for  keeping  the  soul  fresh 
and  the  mind  renewed  by  a  running  system  of  re¬ 
plenishment. 

The  class  in  Latin  just  mentioned  contained  one 
phenomenon,  as  shown  by  his  genius  for  resisting 
knowledge.  He  was  not  an  idiot.  He  could  not  even 
be  called  feeble-minded,  as  was  proved  by  later  devel¬ 
opments.  He  was  like  a  sound  harpstring  that  some 
kind  of  adhesion  prevented  from  vibrating.  He  came 
of  good  stock.  His  father  was  president  of  a  New 
England  college. 

At  the  close  of  the  term  there  would  be  a  public 
examination  at  which  this  candidate  for  scholastic 
honors  would  be  required  to  exhibit  his  familiarity 
with  classic  literature,  and  in  the  presence  probably  of 
his  distinguished  father;  for  a  teacher  has  to  deal  not 
only  with  his  pupils  but  with  their  parents  and  with 
the  Secretary  of  the  State  Board  of  Education.  As 
soon  as  I  discovered  the  lad’s  condition  of  mind  I  put 
him  upon  one  of  zEsop’s  Fables,  and  held  him  to  that 


38  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


fable  every  recitation  till  examination  day,  on  which 
occasion  he  did  himself  proud.  He  translated  it  as 
freely  as  though  he  were  reading  his  native  English, 
and  the  answers  to  my  questions  upon  the  text  rolled 
from  his  lips  with  spontaneous  volubility.  A  parrot 
could  not  have  done  better.  I  did  the  boy  no  injustice. 
I  saved  him  from  unnecessary  embarrassment,  and  fa¬ 
miliarized  him  with  one  fable  that  I  am  sure  he  will 
not  forget  to  his  dying  day. 

There  are  too  many  instances  of  men  and  women, 
distinguished  for  exceptional  ability  in  after  life,  who 
were  equally  leisurely  in  their  early  development,  for 
it  to  be  prudent,  under  any  circumstances,  to  estimate 
a  child  as  feeble-minded. 

Charles  Darwin  says  of  himself  in  his  autobiogra¬ 
phy: — “When  I  left  school  I  believe  that  I  was  consid¬ 
ered  by  all  my  mates  and  by  my  father,  as  a  very 
ordinary  boy,  rather  below  the  common  standard  in 
intellect.” 

William  H.  Seward’s  teacher  once  reported  to  his 
father  that  he  was  “too  stupid  to  learn.,, 

In  the  published  life  of  Sir  Isaac  Newton  he  says 
that  “at  the  age  of  twelve  he  stood  very  low  in  the 
schools.  So  little  ability  did  he  show  at  the  age  of 
fifteen  he  was  taken  out  of  school  and  set  to  work 
on  the  farm.” 

It  is  related  of  Samuel  Johnson  that  it  was  only  by 
means  of  hard  whipping  that  anything  could  be  gotten 
out  of  him. 

In  Bruhns’  “Life  of  Alexander  von  Humboldt,”  that 
brilliant  scientist  is  quoted  as  saying  that  in  the  first 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


39 


years  of  his  childhood  his  tutors  were  doubtful  whether 
even  ordinary  powers  of  intelligence  would  ever  be 
developed  in  him. 

Two  years  in  the  Amherst  High  School  were  fol¬ 
lowed,  after  an  interval  spent  in  European  study  and 
travel,  by  three  years  of  instruction  in  Greek  and  Latin 
in  Williston  Seminary,  Easthampton,  Mass.  This  was 
more  congenial  than  high  school  work  for  I  had  to  do 
only  with  boys  that  were  fitting  for  college,  and  most 
of  them  were  there  for  a  definite  purpose.  There  were 
of  course  some  cases  of  delayed  development.  Those 
are  to  be  found  everywhere,  but  I  had  rather  be  slow 
in  developing  than  to  be  a  prodigy.  More  can  be  ex¬ 
pected  of  one  in  the  long  run. 

Opportunity  was  afforded  me  of  carrying  forward 
my  own  studies  and  I  availed  of  it  to  prepare  a  little 
treatise  on  the  Latin  verb  and  its  conjugation  as  illus¬ 
trated  by  the  forms  of  the  Sanscrit.  This  I  did  at 
the  impulse  of  a  slowly  maturing  notion  that  my  life 
was  going  to  occupy  itself  with  the  science  of  compara¬ 
tive  philology,  the  initial  impulse  to  which  was  given 
me  by  that  Trench’s  little  book  on  “The  Study  of 
Words”  already  referred  to.  In  preparing  this  treatise 
I  was  aided  by  suggestions  and  criticisms  received  from 
Professor  Greenough  of  Harvard  University.  I  never 
learned  that  my  effort  created  any  flutter  in  the  world 
of  linguistic  scholarship,  and  it  is  many  years  since  I 
received  any  remittance  from  the  publishers. 

The  time  spent  was  not  lost  upon  myself,  however. 
I  was  taught  to  realize  that  a  word  is  a  live  thing  and 
must  not  be  touched  with  irreverent  hands;  that  in  its 


40  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


very  form  it  carries  in  itself  a  history;  that  it  may  in¬ 
clude  a  concealed  poem,  or  sermon  or  philosophy;  that 
to  rob  a  word  of  a  letter  because  it  has  become  a  silent 
letter  may  be  a  piece  of  linguistic  atrocity;  that  English 
is  an  admirable  language,  but  not  nearly  so  admirable 
as  some  other  languages  have  been;  that  by  the  loss  of 
inflectional  changes  it  has  sacrificed  its  ability  to  ex¬ 
press  the  finest  shades  of  thought  (for  example  its  loss 
of  the  subjunctive  mood)  ;  that  it  is  not  to  be  expected 
that  English  will  become  a  universal  language,  except 
perhaps  for  commercial  purposes,  and  that  its  univer¬ 
sality  would  be  a  misfortune.  A  calculation  in  dollars 
and  cents  of  the  value  of  the  time  spent  in  learning  to 
spell  English  words  does  not  impress  me  seriously. 
Far  back  in  history  when  language  consisted  mostly  in 
signs  the  ability  to  communicate  was  attended  by  no 
expense  at  all.  That  there  is  deeply  implanted  a  popu¬ 
lar  sense  antagonistic  to  the  vivisection  of  words  is 
evidenced  by  the  fact  that  with  all  the  literature  that  has 
been  devoted  to  the  simplification  of  spelling  and  with 
all  the  resolutions  that  learned  societies  have  adopted  to 
the  same  end,  we  continue  to  spell  as  we  have  been  in 
the  habit  of  spelling  with  the  occasional  dropping  of 
an  inoffensive  “e”  or  an  historically  unimportant  “gh.” 

Reverting  to  Williston  Seminary  the  Principal  did 
not  believe  in  boys,  although  it  was  a  boys’  school, — 
but  regarded  them  as  a  necessary  evil,  fitted  to  be  the 
objects  of  suspicion  and  penal  infliction.  The  class  of 
students  that  patronized  the  institution  at  that  time  con¬ 
tained  a  liberal  sprinkling  of  the  lawless  sort,  so  that 
school  government  became  a  frequent  subject  of  dis- 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


41 


cussion  and  dispute  between  the  principal  and  his 
teachers.  If  he  was  ever  a  real  boy  himself  it  was  so 
long  ago  that  he  had  forgotten  what  boyhood  means, 
which  was  not  the  case  with  us,  the  younger  members 
of  the  teaching  staff.  When  he  scored  the  boys  in 
Chapel,  as  he  frequently  did  after  completing  morning 
devotions,  we  of  course  were  obliged  to  look  as  though 
we  regarded  their  exuberant  conduct  as  the  very  acme 
of  depravity,  and  sat  in  solemn  state  with  our  features 
knotted  into  an  expression  of  surprised  distress.  He 
could  not  appreciate  boy-nature  nor  reflect  that  it  is 
only  the  young  colt  with  ginger  enough  in  him  to  break 
through  a  five-barred  fence  or  clear  the  top,  that  gives 
presumptive  evidence  of  being  enough  of  a  colt  to  be 
worth  breeding. 

The  boys  of  marked  ability  were  usually  the  most 
irrepressible.  There  was  young  Dawes  of  Pittsfield, 
Mass.,  son  of  the  late  Senator  Dawes,  who  was  so 
bright  that  it  made  him  uncomfortable,  resulting  in 
efforts  at  self-relief  perplexing  to  the  ingenuity  of  his 
special  teacher,  who  happened  to  be  myself.  Then 
there  was  Crane  of  Dalton,  Mass.,  a  name  that  subse¬ 
quently  became  familiar  throughout  Massachusetts  and 
beyond.  He  was  not  bad,  but  his  divergencies  from 
normal  decorum  were  so  unique  as  to  afford  the 
younger  teachers  suppressed  delight,  while  they  cost 
the  principal  painful  solicitude. 

Young  depravity  differs  in  its  very  genius  from 
adult  depravity.  A  boy’s  misbehavior  cannot  be  judged 
by  the  same  standard  as  his  father’s.  Morality  is  some¬ 
thing  that  has  to  be  learned:  just  as  much  so  as  intelli- 


42  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


gence  has  to  be  learned.  We  are  not  born  either  moral 
or  immoral  but  unmoral.  It  is  apparently  mroe  difficult 
to  arrive  at  the  possession  of  a  clear  moral  sense  than 
to  achieve  a  distinct  intellectual  sense.  The  younger 
teachers  at  Easthampton  understood  this  better  than 
the  aged  principal.  Therefore  the  most  disturbing 
irregularities  practiced  by  the  boys  were  regarded  by 
us  as  something  to  be  curbed  rather  than  as  occasion 
for  chastisement.  From  which  it  follows  that  a  pun¬ 
ished  child  regards  the  infliction  as  retributive  malice 
rather  than  as  retributive  justice;  administered  for  the 
satisfaction  of  the  parent  rather  than  for  the  good  of 
the  child.  I  was  oijce  a  child  and  speak  from  the  child’s 
standpoint. 

It  is  doubtless  due  in  part  to  some  recognition  of  this 
fact  that  the  coarser  forms  of  discipline  are  more  hesi¬ 
tatingly  resorted  to  than  formerly,  and  that  there  is 
more  effort  to  reach  the  child  through  the  heart  than 
through  that  part  of  the  body  which  a  school-teacher 
once  told  me  was  constructed  with  a  particular  view 
to  punitive  manipulation.  Principals  of  the  old  time 
English  schools  were  past  masters  in  the  art  of  flagella¬ 
tion  and  it  is  reported  that  seven  boys  studying  at  Eton 
were  sent  one  day  by  a  submaster  to  the  house  of  the 
principal,  who  upon  receiving  them  immediately  re¬ 
moved  his  coat  and  seizing  a  lash  which  hung  conven¬ 
iently  near,  commenced  laying  it  over  the  back  of  one 
of  the  seven  supposed  culprits.  He  had  already  exer¬ 
cised  himself  upon  five  of  them  when  the  sixth,  lifting 
a  trembling  voice  said,  “But  please,  sir,  we  were  sent 


AMHERST  COLLEGE 


43 


over  here  with  a  view  to  entering  the  confirmation 
class.” 

Nothing  else  of  my  Williston  Seminary  experience 
do  I  care  to  record  except  to  say  that  on  the  23rd  of 
November,  1870,  I  married  Miss  Nellie  Bodman, 
daughter  of  Luther  Bodman  of  Northampton,  Mass. 
She  had  been  a  pupil  of  mine  in  the  Amherst  High 
School.  No  language  that  might  not  seem  to  strangers 
extravagant,  would  serve  to  express  my  appreciation  of 
Mrs.  Parkhurst’s  faithful  and  unremitting  cooperation. 
Both  at  Lenox  where  her  zealous  devotion  to  the  in¬ 
terests  of  our  little  church, — which  cost  her  an  illness 
from  which  she  was  three  years  in  effecting  a  complete 
recovery, — and  later  in  New  York  where  she  gave  her¬ 
self  to  the  Madison  Square  Church  people,  with  as 
much  unreserve  as  though  she  had  been  herself  called 
to  the  pastorate,  her  cooperation  possessed  a  value  that 
cannot  be  adequately  expressed. 

Shortly  after  coming  to  the  city,  and  as  soon  as  her 
health  permitted,  she  gradually  introduced  herself  to 
the  women’s  work  of  the  church,  and  in  a  little  time, 
by  a  cautious  and  affectionate  assertion  of  herself, 
found  herself,  to  her  surprise,  exerting  a  leading  in¬ 
fluence  in  that  department  of  church  activities.  She 
led  and  the  others  followed  and  were  glad  to  follow, 
and  incontestable  evidence  of  their  loyalty  to  her  has 
continued  to  be  shown,  as  well  since  our  retirement 
from  the  church  as  before. 

She  also  entered  with  similar  consecration  into  the 
support  of  the  Gospel  work  organized  by  Dr.  McAll  of 
Paris,  and  became  president  of  the  National  McAll 


44  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Association,  a  position  which  she  continued  to  hold  till 
her  recently  impaired  health  necessitated  her  resignation. 
She  put  so  much  of  herself  into  that  service,  that  it 
would  hardly  be  an  exaggeration  to  say  that  some  of  the 
life  with  which  that  association  still  survives  is  mo¬ 
mentum  wrought  by  the  vitality  that  she  originally 
communicated  to  it.  On  the  23rd  of  November,  1920, 
we  celebrated  our  Golden  Wedding  and  the  cordiality 
of  the  occasion  indicated  that  the  love  that  had  in  pre¬ 
vious  years  been  manifested  toward  us  by  our  old 
friends  of  the  Madison  Square  Church  was  more  than 
an  ephemeral  affection. 

On  the  28th  of  the  following  May,  after  many 
months  of  weary  suffering,  she  passed  to  her  eternal 
rest. 


CHAPTER  III 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 

After  three  years  spent  at  Williston  Seminary,  and 
following  a  vacation  spent  in  Germany  for  purposes 
of  study  and  travel,  I  had  reached  the  year  1874,  at 
which  time  I  was  thirty-two  years  old,  with  nothing 
settled  as  to  a  profession.  I  had  no  sense  of  age  and 
never  have  had,  but  32  is  only  one  year  short  of  what  is 
reckoned  as  a  generation,  and  it  occurred  to  me  that  if 
Providence  had  neglected  me,  I  ought  to  do  something 
on  my  own  account,  and  that  whatever  move  I  should 
volunteer  to  make  might  be  what  Providence  was  wait¬ 
ing  for  and  the  method  through  which  with  infinite 
wisdom  it  was  purposing  to  operate.  Free  agency  and 
Divine  Sovereignty  so  fold  into  each  other  that  it  is 
difficult  deciding  where  one  leaves  off  and  the  other 
begins  or  whether  they  work  contemporaneously.  I 
decided  to  go  to  Amherst  and  consult  Professor  Seelye, 
who  had  been  a  good  friend  and  a  wise  counsellor.  I 
knew  from  what  had  previously  passed  between  us  that 
his  theory  of  Providence  was  very  much  like  my  own, 
which  led  me  to  put  implicit  confidence  in  his  theory, — 
which  is  about  what  our  usual  confidence  in  other 
people’s  judgment  amounts  to. 

What  transpired  in  my  interview  with  him  has  al¬ 
ready  been  referred  to.  In  brief  summary  it  was  this: 

45 


46  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


“Parkhurst,  you  have  been  on  an  intellectual  strain  for 
fourteen  years.  You  have  neglected  the  development 
of  your  emotional  nature  and  are  thus  left  in  a  one¬ 
sided  condition.  I  think  that  a  couple  of  years  of 
preaching  would  contribute  to  establish  an  equipoise. 
In  other  words  your  personality  has  become  desiccated, 
and  I  think  that  a  combination  of  pulpit  and  pastoral 
work  will  conspire  to  produce  the  necessary  satura¬ 
tion.”  That  was  certainly  direct,  quite  as  much  so  as 
the  phrenological  examination  to  which  I  had  once  been 
subjected  by  Fowler  of  “Fowler  and  Wells.” 

I  had  already  received  from  the  ministerial  associa¬ 
tion  of  Hampshire  County  a  license  to  preach,  a  step 
that  I  was  moved  to  by  an  instinctive  rather  than  a 
rational  impulse.  I  had  never  studied  theology  and 
have  not  done  so  since.  The  association  convened  in 
Goshen,  a  little  hill-town  in  Northern  Massachusetts. 
I  went  up  from  Northampton  the  afternoon  before  and 
spent  the  evening  cursorily  examining  some  theological 
treatise  that  I  took  up  with  me.  I  had  a  friend  at  court 
in  the  person  of  the  pastor  of  the  church  in  which  my 
wife  was  a  member.  He  acted  effectively  and  his  in¬ 
fluence  swayed  the  association.  His  name  was  Hall, 
the  same  as  that  of  the  minister  that  subsequently  was 
of  incalculable  assistance  to  me  when  I  came  before 
the  New  York  Presbytery.  Whatever  theory  we  may 
entertain  in  regard  to  the  matter  of  “pull,”  it  does  mar¬ 
vellously  lubricate  the  machinery  of  life.  Some  com¬ 
ments  on  theological  preparation  for  the  ministry  I 
shall  make  further  on. 

Recurring  to  Professor  Seelye’s  advice,  it  involved 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 


47 


no  expectation  or  even  intimation  that  a  couple  of  years 
in  the  ministry  would  be  of  any  advantage  to  my  par¬ 
ishioners  but  only  to  myself.  It  was  to  be  missionary 
work  but  I  was  to  be  the  heathen  as  well  as  the  mis¬ 
sionary.  The  Professor  said  that  he  knew  of  a  vacant 
pulpit  and  was  acquainted  with  some  members  of  the 
congregation  to  which  the  late  occupant  of  that  pulpit 
had  ministered.  He  considerately  omitted  to  mention 
that  the  late  occupant  had  committed  suicide.  I  con¬ 
sented  to  the  Professor’s  communicating  with  the  ap¬ 
propriate  party  belonging  to  the  Lenox  Congregational 
Church. 

I  presently  received  from  that  Church  an  invitation 
to  supply  its  pulpit  one  Sabbath.  Now  this  was  in 
December,  a  cold  month  almost  anywhere  in  the  North 
and  particularly  so  in  central  Berkshire  which  is  a 
thousand  feet  above  sea  level.  The  village  was  lying 
under  a  couple  of  feet  of  snow;  the  wind,  which  in 
that  locality  rarely  rests,  even  on  the  Sabbath,  was 
blowing  a  gale  and  the  mercury  was  playing  around 
zero.  At  the  close  of  the  evening  service  the  church 
treasurer  came  forward  and  laying  a  bill  on  the  desk 
said,  “There’s  your  money.”  In  the  morning  I  rode 
two  miles  to  the  railway  station,  wondering  if  this  was 
a  fair  specimen  of  what  Professor  Seelye  promised  me 
in  the  way  of  “saturation.” 

The  outward  condition  of  congelation,  it  presently 
appeared,  did  not  extend  to  the  hearts  of  the  people. 
On  request  I  visited  them  again  and  presently  received 
a  call  which  I  accepted.  The  church  was  prepared  to 
take  me  at  my  face  value  but  preferred  to  conform  to 


48  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


usage  and  to  seek  the  advice  of  a  council,  a  council 
made  up  of  clerical  and  lay  members  of  the  churches 
of  South  Berkshire.  In  other  words  it  violated  to  that 
extent  the  Congregational  principle,  which  is  that  of 
autonomy,  and  thought  to  secure  to  itself  an  adven¬ 
titious  dignity  by  taking  a  leaf  out  of  the  book  of  Pres¬ 
byterianism;  for  Congregationalism,  as  authoritatively 
defined,  is  “the  recognition  of  a  church  of  that  order 
as  a  self-governing  body  capable  of  choosing  its  own 
officers,  expressing  its  creed  in  such  forms  as  seem  best 
to  it,  determining  the  conditions  for  the  admission  of 
its  members  and  ordering  its  public  worship  as  it  deems 
most  fitting.”  English  Congregationalism  keeps  closer 
to  that  ideal  than  American,  which  latter  betrays  a 
coquettish  leaning  toward  the  Presbyterial  system. 

Accordingly  an  “advisory  council”  was  summoned 
which  held  its  sessions  in  “the  little  white  church  on 
the  hill.”  The  purpose  of  that  council  was  not,  I  as¬ 
sume,  to  determine  whether  I  was  a  Christian,  but 
whether  I  had  reduced  religious  truth  to  a  philosophic 
system  to  which  all  my  pulpit  utterances  would  be 
squared,  as  a  tailor  lays  a  paper  pattern  upon  the  goods 
from  which  he  cuts  his  garment.  It  very  soon  became 
evident  that  the  members  were  present  for  that  purpose 
and  were  prepared  to  make  the  most  of  the  opportunity. 

Interrogation  had  not  proceeded  far  before  I  felt 
thoroughly  acquainted  with  the  theological  attitude  of 
South  Berkshire,  and  began  to  stake  my  hopes  of  a 
favorable  result  on  the  assistance  of  the  same  clergy¬ 
man  who  had  helped  me  through  at  Goshen,  and  on 
my  father-in-law,  who  was  a  lay  member  of  the  council. 


M  Y  FIRST  PASTORATE 


49 


There  was  a  long  afternoon  session  at  the  close  of 
which  the  members  retired  for  rest  and  refreshments, 
to  convene  again  in  the  evening  in  secret  session.  I 
never  knew  how  the  vote  stood  in  the  final  action — only 
that  I  was  allowed  to  be  ordained.  It  was  symptomatic 
of  the  prevailing  sentiment  that,  at  the  close  of  the 
ordination  services  Dr.  Gale  of  Lee,  the  moderator  of 
the  council,  pronounced  the  benediction,  a  part  which 
is  uniformly  assigned  to  the  new  pastor.  I  wondered 
how  much  experience  of  this  kind  was  going  to  be 
necessary  in  order  to  fulfill  Professor  Seelye’s  desire 
to  have  achieved  in  me  a  proper  balance  between  my 
intellectual  and  emotional  nature. 

Councils  called  for  the  settlement  of  a  minister  are 
always  popular  occasions  for  all  except  the  candidate, 
for  each  inquisitor  remembers  the  experience  which  he 
had  himself  had  on  a  similar  occasion  and  can  put  what¬ 
ever  question  he  pleases  and  stir  any  problem  that 
happens  to  occur  to  him  without  thereby  exposing  any 
latent  heresies  of  his  own  or  imperilling  his  reputation 
for  orthodoxy.  It  affords  to  the  members  of  the 
council  the  congenial  opportunity  to  see  the  wounded 
bird  flutter  under  the  difficult  interrogations  shot  at 
him.  It  affords  them  the  entertainment  which  less 
reverend  people  secure  by  less  dignified  means  and  has 
all  the  charm  but  none  of  the  indecency  of  a  cockfight. 
The  council  was  generous,  however,  and  threw  the 
doors  open  to  all  the  members  of  the  Lenox  Church 
congregation,  securing  thus  a  thorough  advertisement 
of  the  candidate’s  moral,  religious  and  dogmatic  quality 
for  good  or  for  bad. 


50  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


I  have  related  this  story  with  some  detail  not  simply 
because  it  was  an  important  incident  in  my  life  but 
because  we  can  see  in  it  part  explanation  of  the  meager 
number  of  earnest  and  independent  thinkers  that  make 
choice  of  the  ministry.  They  are  the  very  ones, — 
other  things  being  equal, — that  the  ministry  most  needs 
because  sufficiently  virile  in  their  mentality  to  think  for 
themselves  and  to  reluctate  against  theological  techni¬ 
calities  that  are  of  mere  human  devising.  And  yet  they 
are  the  very  ones  that  will  be  most  likely  to  be  turned 
down  when  they  apply  for  holy  orders,  especially  if 
they  encounter  the  sort  of  council  that  I  was  pitted 
against  in  South  Berkshire. 

It  is  of  interest  that  even  St.  Paul,  who  could  hardly 
be  charged  with  heterodoxy,  took  care  to  keep  out  of 
the  way  of  the  “pillars  of  the  church.”  It  is  difficult 
for  people  who  do  some  thinking  on  their  own  account 
to  satisfy  those  who  have  in  such  way  committed  them¬ 
selves  to  a  formula  as  to  be  more  enamoured  of  the 
formula  than  of  that  which  the  formula  vainly  attempts 
perfectly  to  express.  That  was  why  the  late  Professor 
Briggs  was  turned  out  of  the  Presbyterian  Church  for 
heresy.  His  accusers  could  not  understand  how  a  man 
who  expressed  himself  in  terms  different  from  those 
which  they  employed  could  have  as  firm  a  grasp  upon 
biblical  truth  as  they  did  themselves,  even  if  not  a  con¬ 
siderably  firmer  grasp. 

In  reading  the  narrative  of  Christ’s  dealings  with 
the  people  he  moved  among,  it  is  noticeable  what  a 
variety  of  notes  he  struck  in  order  to  hit  the  music  that 
was  in  each  ear.  The  sick  believed  in  him  because 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 


51 


he  healed  them;  the  blind  because  he  gave  them  new 
eyes ;  the  hungry  because  he  procured  them  bread ;  the 
thirsty  because  he  made  them  wine;  the  discouraged 
because  he  brought  them  a  new  hope;  the  wicked  be¬ 
cause  he  forgave  them.  He  conducted  men  to  God, 
but  was  all  kinds  of  open  door  for  them  to  go  through 
and  a  separate  door  for  each  particular  one. 

So  that  if  the  sick  man  that  was  healed  had  gone 
out  to  preach  Christ  he  would  have  preached  him  as 
the  healer;  the  blind  man  that  had  sight  given  him 
would  have  preached  him  as  the  light  of  the  world; 
the  hungry  man  that  had  been  fed  would  proclaim 
Christ  as  the  bread  of  life.  They  would  each  have 
taken  their  text  not  from  the  catechism  but  from  Christ 
as  he  had  become  especially  revealed  to  them  through 
their  own  specialized  experience  of  him.  Other  aspects 
of  Christ’s  character  and  ministration  they  might  each 
of  them  be  unable  to  say  much  about,  and  would  so  far 
forth  have  passed  a  very  unsatisfactory  examination, 
and  yet  by  declaring  that  which  they  knew  and  by  testi¬ 
fying  to  that  which  they  had  seen,  would  have  been  able 
to  speak  to  the  edification  even  of  some  who  were  dis¬ 
tressed  by  the  fragmentary  character  of  the  preacher’s 
theology. 

During  this  long  digression  the  members  of  my 
council  scattered  back  into  South  Berkshire.  I  had 
only  kindly  feeling  for  them  individually  and  collec¬ 
tively.  I  knew  they  cherished  only  a  generous  senti¬ 
ment  toward  me  personally,  even  though  discounting 
me  in  my  character  as  a  prospective  South  Berkshire 
Associate.  Although  I  was  geographically  included 


52  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


within  the  South  Berkshire  Association  of  ministers  no 
one  of  its  members  showed  any  disposition  to  frater¬ 
nize  with  me  and  I  of  course,  although  with  the  kindest 
of  feelings,  held  myself  aloof  from  them.  For  an 
entire  year  I  was  left  alone  with  my  congregation 
whose  members  seemed  contented  and  happy,  all  the 
more  so  perhaps  because  of  having  been  momentarily 
anxious  lest  they  should  lose  me. 

My  people  belonged  to  the  farming  class  except  such 
of  them  as  were  city  guests,  of  whom  there  were  very 
few  as  far  back  as  1874  and  those  few  made  but  a 
brief  stay. 

Being  myself  possessed  by  birth  and  by  early  life  of 
rustic  tastes  and  aptitudes  I  had  no  difficulty  in  ad¬ 
justing  myself  to  my  flock.  I  had  no  urban  airs  that 
could  offend  them  and  their  rusticity  did  not  offend 
me.  A  country-bred  minister  is  better  adapted  to  a 
country  congregation,  and  a  city-bred  to  a  city  congre¬ 
gation.  It  is  not  easy  to  escape  the  limitations  wrought 
in  one  by  early  environment. 

My  parishioners  were  none  of  them  exquisites  but 
they  were  genuine.  There  was  no  discrepancy  between 
inside  and  out.  There  was  no  finish  that  camouflaged 
the  substance.  That  simplified  the  process  of  acquain¬ 
tanceship.  Very  few  had  an  education  that  went  be¬ 
yond  the  grammar  or  high  school.  The  recent  transfer 
of  the  county  seat  from  Lenox  to  Pittsfield  had  carried 
with  it  most  of  the  college-educated.  There  was  no 
lack  of  intelligence,  however,  nor  of  heart.  There  was 
plenty  of  downright  thinking  which  is  an  essential  to 
agricultural  success.  It  is  a  mistaken  notion  to  suppose 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 


53 


that  lack  of  education  makes  a  man  easy  to  preach  to. 
A  common  everyday  farmer  may  not  be  equal  to  the 
finenesses  of  intricate  ratiocination  but  he  is  any  man’s 
equal  on  ground  that  has  to  do  with  fundamental  prin¬ 
ciples.  His  daily  occupation  works  in  him  construc¬ 
tively  in  a  way  that  a  university  knows  nothing  about. 

The  people  that  I  had  to  deal  with  were  exceedingly 
individual.  That  is  the  New  England  type.  My  con¬ 
gregation  was  not  a  continent  but  an  archipelago.  Each 
man  left  off  before  the  next  man  began.  I  never  mis¬ 
took  one  man  by  thinking  he  was  some  one  else.  Of 
course  therefore  they  did  not  readily  coalesce.  They 
were  not  naturally  adapted  to  team-work.  One  man 
would  do  better  work  by  himself  than  two  would  do 
the  same  work  cooperatively.  My  mind  therefore  is 
very  definitely  impressed  with  the  distinctive  person¬ 
ality  of  the  members  of  my  congregation,  although  it 
is  nearly  fifty  years  since  I  first  came  to  them. 

I  liked  them  all  and  love  their  memory.  They  were 
very  kind  but  sometimes  they  perplexed  me.  The 
angularity  of  their  judgment  and  the  unsymmetry  of 
their  character  were  a  frequent  puzzle.  They  were 
sometimes  so  intense  in  their  conscientiousness  as  to 
be  pitilessly  harsh  in  their  judgments. 

I  had  two  deacons  (the  New  England  deacon  has  a 
reputation  all  his  own)  whom  we  will  call  A  and  B.  A 
called  upon  me  one  day,  and  speaking  of  B  said,  “He 
dishonors  his  profession  and  is  not  fit  to  be  a  deacon.” 
It  happened  that  the  very  next  day  B  called  and  the 
conversation  turning  on  A,  he  said,  “He  is  a  fit  subject 
for  Church  discipline.”  Now  both  of  those  men  are  in 


54  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


heaven  and  have  a  worthy  place  there.  Each  had  too 
clear  an  eye  for  certain  things  and  not  eye  enough  for 
other  things. 

The  system  of  theology  prevailing  among  the  mem¬ 
bers  of  the  church  was  of  a  decidedly  conservative 
type,  in  some  cases  almost  severely  so ;  as  in  the  case  of 
a  dear  Scotchman  who  had  a  lovely  wife  and  family, 
most  genial  and  kindly  in  bearing  and  address,  appar¬ 
ently  most  mellow  in  all  their  subjective  experiences, 
but  when  the  oldest  child  of  the  family,  a  son  grown 
to  be  fifteen  years  old,  expressed  a  desire  to  unite  with 
the  church  and  I  questioned  him  upon  his  religious 
experience  and  views  and  asked  him  what  he  thought 
was  the  first  step  to  be  taken  in  becoming  a  Christian  his 
reply,  spoken  hesitantly  and  sadly  was,  “I  suppose  that 
the  first  step  that  I  have  to  take  is  to  repent  of  the  sins 
of  my  ancestors.”  What  at  present  is  known  as  a 
Fundamentalist  could  not  go  further. 

My  people,  many  of  them,  had  heavy  burdens  to 
bear  and  very  little  that  varied  the  monotony  of  their 
experience.  There  was  among  them  little  social  life. 
That  made  for  me  the  opportunity  to  be  much  with 
them  in  their  homes,  where  I  was  always  warmly  wel¬ 
comed.  I  watched  with  their  sick  and  although  none 
of  those  to  whom  I  rendered  that  service  eventually 
recovered,  I  am  pleased  to  attribute  their  decease  to 
something  beside  my  attentions. 

Such  intimacy  of  relations,  less  possible  in  the  city 
than  in  the  country,  is  a  distinct  element  of  a  pastor’s 
power.  It  enables  him  to  illustrate  in  common  life 
what  he  preaches  in  the  pulpit  and  tells  with  a  direct- 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 


55 


ness  and  a  continuity  of  effect  rarely  achieved  by  pulpit 
deliverances.  That  closeness  of  contact  with  the  diver¬ 
sified  experiences  of  one’s  parishioners  works  also  to 
the  advantage  of  the  preacher,  provided  he  is  pastor  as 
well  as  preacher,  by  suggesting  lines  of  practical  and 
appreciable  thought  that  he  can  weave  into  his  dis¬ 
courses.  A  sermon  ought  to  be  made  up  in  about  equal 
parts  of  Bible,  and  everyday  life. 

While  no  sermon  that  I  ever  preached  is  such  that 
I  can  regard  it  with  entire  satisfaction,  yet  the  sort  of 
homiletics  that  I  played  off  upon  my  Lenox  people  in 
the  first  months  of  my  stay  with  them  I  continue  to 
recall  with  an  emotion  of  horror.  No  specimens  of  my 
sermonic  experimentation  survive.  To  destroy  them 
was  my  only  means  of  comforting  myself.  I  could  no 
more  preach  than  I  could  sing.  President  Seelye’s 
“saturation”  was  a  word  that  had  no  reality  attaching 
to  it.  I  brought  absolutely  no  heart  to  the  work.  I 
was  in  Lenox  purely  as  an  ad  interim  expedient. 

I  was  rather  strong  on  the  logical  side  and  assumed 
that  the  unconverted  members  of  my  flock,  of  whom 
there  were  presumably  several,  and  whose  conversion 
I  supposed  I  was  there  to  compass,  could  be  readily 
syllogized  into  the  kingdom  of  heaven;  major  premise; 
minor  premise;  conclusion.  There  was  a  flaw  some¬ 
where  ;  the  conclusion  halted.  What  I  gave  them  were 
lectures  rather  than  sermons,  to  which  I  imparted  a 
homiletic  flavor  by  appending  a  concluding  paragraph 
or  two  of  a  hortatory  type,  such  as  would  seem  to  ease 
the  way  toward  an  appropriate  and  effective  “Amen.” 
There  was  no  revolt  on  the  part  of  the  congregation. 


56  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Whether  its  placidity  was  due  to  spiritual  inertia  or  to 
a  love  that  suffereth  long  and  is  kind,  I  could  not  tell. 

Such  a  condition  of  things  could  not  continue  in¬ 
definitely.  It  was  forbidden  by  the  seriousness  both  of 
the  pulpit  and  the  pew.  The  progress  of  events  must 
bring  its  own  correction.  This  correction  came  as 
result  of  the  closer  and  closer  personal  relation  into 
which  I  came  with  the  individual  members  and  families 
of  my  flock,  with  the  consequent  understanding  of  the 
burdens,  sorrows  and  temptations  to  which  they  were 
subjected,  and  which  required  the  relief  of  that  Gospel 
of  comfort  and  strength  of  which  as  pastor  and  teacher, 
I  had  been  put  in  charge.  How  evident  it  became  to 
me  that  the  man  in  the  pulpit  must  also  be  the  man 
in  the  home.  Professor  Seelye’s  theory  had  begun  to 
justify  itself.  Pulpit  lectures  on  the  beauty  of  Berk¬ 
shire  scenery  and  the  glory  of  the  constellations  were 
replaced  by  appeals  addressed  to  the  inner  experiences 
of  those  who  looked  up  to  me  from  the  pews. 

The  tender  immediacy  thus  involved  in  the  relation 
between  the  man  in  the  pulpit  and  the  man  in  the  pew 
has  led  me  to  wonder  whether  I  did  not  make  a  mistake 
in  not  disciplining  myself  to  preach  without  notes.  It 
is  unfortunate  that  we  cannot  know  without  having  to 
learn,  or  that  we  cannot  live  twice  and  in  the  second 
life  correct  the  mistakes  that  we  made  in  the  first.  A 
manuscript  does  to  a  certain  extent  intervene  and  in¬ 
evitably  intervene  as  a  barrier  between  the  pulpit  and 
the  pew,  and  so  far  forth  carry  with  it  a  sacrifice  of 
power.  Dr.  William  M.  Taylor  of  the  Broadway 


MY  FIRST  PASTORATE 


57 


Tabernacle  was  a  prince  of  preachers  and  he  regularly 
read  what  he  had  written.  Dr.  R.  S.  Storrs  commenced 
in  the  same  way  but  adopted  the  extemporaneous 
method  later  on,  and  he  was  a  king  of  preachers.  He 
once  said  to  me, — “Every  horse  must  take  its  own 
pace.”  My  belief  after  forty-five  years  in  the  pulpit  is 
that,  if  one  is  equal  to  it,  the  unwritten  sermon  goes 
furthest  and  deepest,  although  it  may  sometimes  be 
paid  for  by  failure  and  by  faultiness  and  inelegance  of 
phraseology. 

The  two  years  for  which  Professor  Seelye  had  in¬ 
dentured  me  to  the  Lenox  congregation  passed  more 
and  more  rapidly  after  the  first  six  months  and  I  moved 
from  the  second  year  to  the  third  with  no  thought  of 
anything  but  being  the  shepherd  of  my  flock.  I  do  not 
remember  that  I  had  any  particular  thought  about  it 
but  if  I  did  it  was  to  the  effect  that  I  was  doing  the 
kind  of  work  that  I  was  intended  for.  The  problem 
had  solved  itself  in  the  only  way  in  which  large  prob¬ 
lems  can  be  solved.  I  was  no  longer  looking  for  a 
professorship  in  comparative  philology,  nor  was  I  lay¬ 
ing  the  wires  with  a  view  to  getting  out  of  my  present 
field  into  a  larger.  I  did  not  consider  Lenox  as  a  step¬ 
ping-stone  to  a  higher  field  of  service.  Any  field  is 
sufficiently  extended  to  engage  all  the  energies  that  any 
man  is  capable  of  exercising.  A  young  minister  who 
keeps  one  eye  on  the  church  that  he  is  in  and  one  on  the 
church  that  he  would  like  to  be  in,  is  hardly  fitted  to  be 
in  either ;  and  when  the  time  after  five  years  came  for 
a  break,  it  cost  me  pain  in  which  I  know  that  my  dear 


58  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


parishioners  were  participant.  If  a  man  sincerely  loves 
his  first  wife  he  may  nevertheless  love  his  second,  but 
it  will  not  be  in  quite  the  same  way,  and  that  means 
no  lack  of  sincere  affection  for  the  second  and  no  im¬ 
plication  of  the  second’s  unworthiness. 


CHAPTER  IV 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 

In  December  of  ’74  I  received  an  invitation  to  preach 
at  the  morning  service  of  the  Presbyterian  church  that 
was  then  worshipping  in  this  city  at  the  corner  of 
Madison  Avenue  and  Thirty-fifth  Street,  under  the 
pastoral  charge  of  the  late  Dr.  Marvin  R.  Vincent. 
The  invitation  had  been  covertly  arranged  for.  Dur¬ 
ing  the  previous  summer  I  had  had  in  my  Lenox  con¬ 
gregation  a  gentleman  and  his  family  from  New  York 
(Mr.  D.  Willis  James),  who  had  been  for  a  long  time 
deeply  interested  in  the  Madison  Square  Church.  Since 
he  was,  while  in  Lenox,  a  constant  attendant  at  my 
church  I  naturally  met  him  and  a  pleasant  acquaintance¬ 
ship  developed  between  us,  resulting  in  his  request,  on 
leaving  Lenox  for  the  city,  that  when  I  wanted  a  little 
respite  in  the  middle  of  the  winter,  I  should  pay  him 
and  his  family  a  week’s  visit.  I  interpreted  his  invita¬ 
tion  as  being  simply  a  pleasant  way  of  expressing  his 
kindly  feeling  for  me  and  forgot  all  about  it  till  I  was 
reminded  of  it  by  an  invitation  of  the  kind  he  had 
prospectively  tendered  me  six  months  before, — an  in¬ 
vitation  which  he  now  amplified  by  saying  that  Mrs. 
James  desired  that  I  should  slip  a  sermon  into  my 
suit  case. 

I  did  as  he  requested,  and  on  arriving  at  his  resi- 

59 


60  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


dence  on  a  Saturday  afternoon  was  called  upon  by  Dr. 
Vincent  and  invited  by  him  to  preach  for  him  the  fol¬ 
lowing  morning.  Of  course  if  I  had  been  longer  in 
ministerial  life  and  more  familiar  with  the  way  in 
which  things  are  done  I  should  have  suspected  some¬ 
thing  and  should  have  detected  how  neatly  three  or 
four  things,  each  of  which  meant  nothing  by  itself, 
fitted  into  each  other  to  form  an  exceedingly  shapely 
whole.  As  it  was,  no  lamb  ever  went  to  the  slaughter 
more  cheerfully  and  unsuspectingly  than  I  went  and 
preached  to  Dr.  Vincent’s  congregation.  Three  days 
later  I  received  an  informal  invitation  to  the  pastorate 
of  the  Madison  Square  Church.  The  steps  by  which 
it  was  compassed  were  exceedingly  clever  and  had  the 
advantage  of  acquitting  me  of  ambitious  designs  and 
the  other  advantage  of  enabling  me  to  preach  for  Dr. 
Vincent  in  a  manner  of  entire  freedom  and  unrestraint. 
I  have  told  the  story  with  some  detail  for  it  was  so 
serious  an  event  in  my  history  that  I  could  hardly  leave 
it  out  of  my  autobiography. 

The  invitation  tendered  me  was  in  due  time  accepted. 
The  break-up  at  Lenox  was  a  trying  one  on  both  sides. 
We  had  learned  to  believe  in  each  other.  There  were 
some  who  felt  that  I  ought  not  to  leave  them,  while 
others,  particularly  the  male  members  of  the  church, 
considered  that  if  I  was  ever  going  to  leave  them  now 
was  the  time. 

My  first  sermon  in  the  Madison  Square  Church  was 
preached  on  the  29th  of  February,  1880.  The  occasion 
was  observed  with  quiet  dignity,  such  as  was  always 
characteristic  of  the  Madison  Square  Church  people.  I 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


61 


was  led  into  the  auditorium  by  a  long  procession  of 
church  officers, — elders  and  deacons, — marshalled  by 
the  Rev.  Dr.  Adams,  who  introduced  me  to  the  con¬ 
gregation  as  “Our  Pastor”  in  terms  of  affectionate 
delicacy,  which  seemed  then  and  there  to  establish  a 
bond  between  me  and  my  new  people.  To  use  an  ex¬ 
pression  that  I  once  heard  employed  by  the  late  Dr. 
Roswell  D.  Hitchcock,  all  the  members  of  that  pro¬ 
cession  have  in  the  meantime  with  a  single  exception 
“moved  from  the  aisles  into  the  arches.” 

The  Madison  Square  Church  had  moved  that  I  be¬ 
come  its  pastor,  but  Presbytery  had  not  seconded  the 
motion,  and  all  which  that  signified  I  had  still  to  learn. 
This  was  in  1880,  and  prior  therefore  to  Presbytery’s 
change  of  heart.  I  was  known  to  be  nothing  but  a 
Congregationalist,  born  such  and  ordained  by  an  asso¬ 
ciation  of  Congregational  ministers.  All  of  which  was 
against  me.  I  was  a  denominational  foreigner  with 
naturalization  papers  subject  to  Presbyterian  discount. 
It  was  also  against  me  that  when  asked  if  I  believed  in 
the  Presbyterian  polity  of  government  I  replied  that  I 
knew  very  little  about  the  Presbyterian  polity.  It  was 
the  only  honest  reply  I  could  make,  but  I  could  feel 
that  it  bruised  a  sensitive  nerve  in  the  hearts  of  the 
Presbyters,  and  preparations  were  made  to  set  the  stage 
for  an  application  of  the  “third  degree.”  I  began  to 
realize  that  New  York  Presbyterianism  might  prove  a 
harder  fence  to  break  through  than  South  Berkshire 
Congregationalism. 

At  this  critical  juncture  something  happened  which 
has  always  seemed  to  me  to  have  been  a  direct  inter- 


62  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


position  of  Providence,  without  which, — the  condition 
of  the  Presbyterian  mind  at  that  time  being  taken  into 
the  account, — it  is  very  doubtful  if  I  should  ever  have 
become  pastor  of  the  Madison  Square  Church;  and 
singular  as  it  may  appear,  the  instrument  which  Provi¬ 
dence  employed  for  its  purpose  was  the  late  Dr.  John 
Hall,  as  unflinchingly  conservative  a  dogmatic  as  was 
to  be  found  on  the  floor  of  Presbytery.  It  appears  that 
there  was  a  family  in  Lenox  with  which  Dr.  Hall  had 
been  brought  into  rather  close  relations.  It  was  a 
family  of  which  I  was  myself  particularly  fond,  and 
my  sentiments  toward  which  were  thoroughly  recipro¬ 
cated.  Through  that  relation  I  had  become  something 
other  than  a  mere  stranger  to  Dr.  Hall  and  opportunity 
had  been  afforded  him  of  discovering  that  even  if  I 
were  only  a  Congregationalist  and  as  ignorant  as  a 
young  Fiji  of  Presbyterian  polity,  I  was  yet  not  alto¬ 
gether  bad  and  under  Presbyterial  influence  might 
become  something  worth  while.  When  therefore  ar¬ 
rangements  were  being  made  for  my  impeachment  the 
Doctor  arose  and  spoke  substantially  as  follows, — “Our 
young  brother  has  come  to  us  from  the  Congregational 
Church.  He  has  come  properly  accredited  by  the 
authorized  representatives  of  that  body.  That  body  is 
recognized  by  us  and  affiliated  with  us,  and  it  would 
be  an  expression  of  disrespect  to  it,  if  we  were  to  sub¬ 
ject  this  brother  to  a  formal  examination.”  This 
effected  a  stay  of  proceedings  and  I  was  formally 
adopted  into  the  Presbyterian  fold.  In  the  words  of 
our  old  Presbyterian  hymn,  “O  Lord,  on  what  a  slender 
thread,  etc.” 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


63 


No  pastor  could  ask  for  a  nobler  company  of  men 
and  women  than  that  which  composed  the  congregation 
that  it  was  my  privilege  to  serve  for  thirty-eight  years. 
It  was  high-minded,  fine-spirited  and  graciously  consid¬ 
erate  of  the  shortcomings  of  the  young  importation 
from  the  country.  If  there  were  individual  disaffec- 
tions  I  never  knew  it.  In  fact  the  current  of  our  church 
ran  so  smoothly  and  was  so  free  from  startling  or  sen¬ 
sational  event  that  it  is  impossible  to  compose  a  history 
of  it  that  would  be  of  interest  to  any  but  those  who 
were  immediately  connected  with  the  congregation. 
There  was,  I  think,  the  realization  on  the  part  of  my 
people  that  whatever  the  imperfections  of  my  ministry, 
whether  as  preacher  or  as  pastor,  I  was  doing  the  best 
I  knew  how.  I  was  rarely  out  of  my  pulpit  on  the 
Sabbath  and  commenced  at  once  to  make  myself  per¬ 
sonally  acquainted  with  the  individual  members  of  the 
congregation.  I  did  not  follow  the  advice  of  one  mem¬ 
ber  who  said, — “We  do  not  expect  you  to  call  upon 
all  the  members  of  the  congregation  but  there  are  a 
few  of  us  that  hope  you  will  see  us  quite  frequently.” 
I  felt  that  the  same  democratic  spirit  ought  to  govern 
my  conduct  in  the  city  as  had  governed  it  in  the 
country. 

In  my  Congregational  pastorate  all  matters  of  secular 
import  were  of  course  subject  to  the  will  of  the  entire 
congregation,  and  all  matters  concerning  the  spirituali¬ 
ties  were  under  the  control  of  the  entire  membership  of 
the  church.  As  I  told  the  Presbytery,  I  had  no  knowl¬ 
edge  of  the  fact  that  under  Presbyterian  principles  it 
was  only  to  a  small  board  of  trustees  that  were  com- 


64  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


mitted  the  material  interests  and  to  a  small  board  of 
elders  responsibility  for  spiritual  interests.  It  was  a 
great  relief  to  me  to  find  that  the  New  England  system 
of  open  town  meeting  where  those  who  knew  least  had 
the  most  to  say,  did  not  obtain  in  Presbyterial  ecclesi- 
asticism  and  that  only  those  whom  the  congregation 
considered  most  capable  of  bearing  responsibility  had 
responsibility  laid  upon  them.  It  is  with  very  great 
pleasure  that  I  look  back  to  the  meetings  of  our  Ses¬ 
sion  where  matters  of  great  spiritual  moment  came  up 
for  consideration.  We  must  have  had  between  one  and 
two  hundred  such  gatherings  and  only  once  was  there 
the  slightest  suggestion  of  friction  and  that  had  to  do 
with  the  matter  of  music,  a  subject  concerning  which 
the  two  that  were  principally  concerned  in  debate  had 
only  elementary  information.  Some  disquiet  regarding 
the  same  matter  subsequently  developed  itself  and  even 
extended  itself  through  the  congregation.  It  was  a 
disturbed  condition  of  mind  that  was  entirely  explica¬ 
ble,  but  the  progress  of  events  soon  changed  conditions 
in  a  way  to  the  satisfaction  of  all  concerned.  As  music 
is  the  concord  of  sweet  sounds  it  is  strange  that  it 
should  be  so  disharmonizing  in  its  effects  and  that  it 
should  be  the  special  occasion  of  anxiety  to  a  pastor. 

There  may  have  been  some  criticism  on  the  active 
interest  which  for  two  years  I  took  in  matters  of  local 
politics,  although,  if  there  was,  I  was  not  knowing  to  it. 
Entrance  into  such  conflict  was  not  premeditated,  but, 
once  in,  it  was  hardly  possible  or  honorable  to  draw 
out.  The  final  issue  must  have  tended,  at  least,  to 
diminish  any  displeasure  which  may  have  been  excited 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


65 


by  my  actions.  On  general  principles  however  it  is 
unwise  and  unjust  to  the  interests  of  a  church  that  so 
large  an  amount  of  time  and  effort,  due  to  the  church, 
should  be  withheld  from  it  and  applied  elsewhere;  a 
proposition  which  at  the  same  time,  does  not  antag¬ 
onize  this  other  principle  that  the  world  is  put  in  charge 
of  the  church  and  that  what  is  bad  in  the  world  is  there 
for  the  reason  that  the  church  has  not  yet  compassed 
all  the  ground  that  by  divine  right  belongs  to  it. 

One  problem  which  I  had  to  face,  notice  of  which 
was  given  to  me  at  my  first  entrance  upon  the  scene, 
was  the  rival  claim  which  was  made  upon  a  number  of 
members  of  the  Madison  Square  Church  by  religious 
efforts  which  were  being  prosecuted  outside  of  the 
church  and  outside  of  any  church.  I  would  not  have 
moved  any  man  from  an  outside  position  which  he  was 
occupying  efficiently  and  have  solicited  his  transferring 
his  active  allegiance  to  his  own  church;  at  the  same 
time  if  all  the  activity  expended  elsewhere  had  been 
centered  at  Madison  Square  it  would  have  added  tre¬ 
mendously  to  the  efficiency  of  the  church  and  would 
possibly  have  extended  its  tenure  of  life.  It  must  be 
remembered  in  this  connection  that  the  church  with  its 
sacraments,  is  the  determining  center  of  Christian 
power,  and  that  any  Gospel  work  carried  forward  out¬ 
side  has  to  lean  back  upon  the  church  for  its  per¬ 
manency  and  efficiency. 

It  is  pleasant  to  mention  just  here  the  splendid  out¬ 
side  work  that  for  thirty-six  years  has  been  carried  on 
in  vital  connection  with  the  Madison  Square  Church, 
managed  by  a  committee  from  the  church,  and  which 


66  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


i 


has  been  for  twenty-nine  years  under  the  efficient  chair¬ 
manship  of  Mr.  Henry  N.  Tifft.  By  virtue  of  its 
direct  connection  with  the  church  it  strengthened  the 
church  even  as  the  church  strengthened  it. 

Of  the  cooperation  of  the  women  of  the  church  I 
cannot  speak  in  too  earnest  terms  of  appreciation.  On 
the  basis  of  prior  organization  they  soon  passed  under 
the  guidance  and  inspiration  of  Mrs.  Parkhurst  and 
materially  strengthened  the  church  by  wise,  devoted 
and  unremitting  service  and  by  the  hold  which  they 
gained  and  retained  upon  such  members  of  the  con¬ 
gregation  as  were  not  enlisted  in  direct  church  enter¬ 
prise. 

As  our  choir  acquired  a  city-wide  reputation  it  is 
proper  that  mention  should  be  made  of  it.  When  I 
came  to  the  church  its  music  was  its  one  weak  point. 
I  early  inferred  that  from  the  fact  that  at  my  service 
of  installation  music  was  excluded.  On  ordinary 
occasions  the  music  was  rendered  by  a  quartet  backed 
by  an  antiquated  “whistle-chest.”  The  soprano  and 
contralto  were  antipathetic.  The  bass  was  Teutonic 
and  his  life  had  been  lived  prior  to  the  passage  of  the 
Eighteenth  Amendment.  His  vocal  output  expended 
upon  the  rendition  of  the  songs  of  Zion  varied  in 
volume  according  to  the  degree  in  which  at  the  moment 
he  was  under  the  influence  of  the  spirit.  His  service 
culminated  in  an  unfortunate  loss  of  self-control  ter¬ 
minating  in  an  unseemly  disaster. 

During  the  latter  part  of  my  pastorate  my  chorus 
choir,  under  the  direction  of  Howard  E.  Parkhurst, 
my  brother,  was  my  particular  joy.  Its  members  were 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


67 


warmly  in  sympathy  with  the  service.  They  reenforced 
the  minister.  They  sang  appreciatively  the  Gospel  that 
he  preached.  There  was  no  attempt  at  display.  I 
rarely  listen  to  a  choir  which  does  not  in  my  judgment 
suffer  by  comparison.  I  still  miss  it  although  it  is  three 
years  since  I  listened  to  it. 

MOVE  TOWARD  AMALGAMATION 

When  I  came  to  the  church  in  1880  the  entire  region 
was  solidly  residential.  Perhaps  no  one  at  that  time 
dreamed  that  it  would  ever  be  otherwise ;  nor  was  there 
any  marked  drift  of  population  till  after  the  erection 
of  the  new  church.  But  when  the  change  came  it  broke 
upon  us  with  a  suddenness  that  was  disconcerting  and 
disheartening.  When  we  finally  succumbed  to  destiny 
the  center  of  gravity  of  my  congregation  was  between 
Fortieth  and  Fiftieth  streets. 

To  abandon  a  consecrated  edifice  at  the  impulse  of 
changeable  human  conditions  seems  almost  like  a  divine 
defeat  and  under  all  circumstances  is  regrettable,  espe¬ 
cially  because  of  the  interpretation  likely  to  be  put  upon 
it  by  those  who  have  no  personal  interest  in  consecrated 
places.  I  remember  the  dismantling  of  a  church  at 
Twentieth  Street  many  years  ago,  and  the  effect,  both 
depressing  and  comical,  that  was  produced  by  the  un¬ 
covering  to  the  public  eye  of  a  text  of  Scripture  that 
had  been  painted  upon  the  inner  wall,  “I  was  glad  when 
they  said  unto  me,  let  us  go  into  the  house  of  the  Lord.” 

At  the  same  time,  so  far  as  we  cannot  create  condi¬ 
tions,  it  is  a  matter  of  good  Christian  sense  to  adjust 
ourselves  to  those  that  force  themselves  upon  us.  Out 


68  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


of  the  situation  which  thus  confronted  us  developed  the 
scheme  of  amalgamation,  by  which  the  three  churches, 
Madison  Square,  Old  First,  and  University  Place,  be¬ 
came  combined  in  a  single  ecclesiastical  body.  The 
three  congregations  entered  into  the  arrangement  with 
varying  degrees  of  cordiality,  the  three  pastors  in¬ 
teresting  themselves  in  promoting  the  plan  with  their 
respective  congregations ;  it  being  considered  that  by 
combining  the  three  congregations  and  pooling  their 
respective  assets  (of  which  Madison  Square  furnished 
nearly  one  million)  there  would  be  established  an  in¬ 
stitution  so  securely  planted  as  to  be  proof  against  the 
effect  of  shifting  populations  and  all  other  adverse  in¬ 
fluences  that  might  assert  themselves  for  generations 
to  come,  becoming  thus  a  monument  of  Presbyterian¬ 
ism  as  Old  Trinity  has  been  monumental  of  Episco- 
palianism. 

At  this  point  it  is  fitting  that  I  make  a  few  extracts 
from  the  sermon  which  I  delivered  on  the  morning  of 
May  26th,  1918,  the  last  which  I  preached  to  my  dear 
people,  as  follows:  “The  sacrifice  of  our  local  identity 
as  a  church,  because  of  the  merger  now  consummated, 
must  be  viewed  under  that  aspect.  The  sacrifice  costs 
almost  inexpressible  pain,  but  instead  of  its  working 
our  extinction  or  diminution  we  enter  only  more  largely 
into  the  totality  of  church  life.  The  State  of  New  York 
is  made  more  of  a  State  by  being  part  of  the  American 
Union  than  it  would  have  been  by  being  thrown  out 
into  midocean  and  left  to  work  out  its  own  national 
destiny.  In  its  present  relations  it  becomes  sharer  in 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


69 


the  nation’s  collective  life,  participant  in  its  larger  bene¬ 
fits,  in  its  more  affluent  resources. 

“The  finer  any  kind  of  organization  the  more  it  suf¬ 
fers  by  being  lived  in  a  small  way.  Where  its  real 
value  is  largely  dependent  upon  action  and  reaction 
maintained  between  its  members — as  is  the  case  in  a 
church — its  quantitative  reduction  involves  its  qualita¬ 
tive  reduction.  So  that,  maintained  under  proper  con¬ 
dition,  the  life  of  the  Amalgamated  Church  will  do 
more  for  its  members  than  would  be  done  for  them 
while  living  in  a  three-fold  state  of  isolation. 

“All  of  this  will  result  if  the  enterprise  is  entered 
into  as  an  opportunity,  not  as  a  cold  necessity.  A  con¬ 
tinent  promises  more  to  its  inhabitants  than  an  archi¬ 
pelago.  All  of  this  follows  with  the  recognition  of  the 
clear  truth  that  a  local  church  is  at  its  best  but  a  mere 
fragment;  and  the  more  it  is  expanded — other  things 
being  equal — the  more  adequate  becomes  its  experience 
of  church  reality  and  church  efficiency. 

“That  is  why  denominational  distinctions  are  bad; 
they  frame  the  universal  church  of  God  into  compart¬ 
ments— some  of  them  air-tight — which  prevent  both  the 
introduction  of  fresh  air  and  also  its  expulsion.  The 
church  is  as  large  as  the  sky  and  wants  to  be  as  open, 
with  no  custom  house  port  of  entry  to  tax  spiritual 
commodities  that  are  in  transitu.  In  a  word,  we  want 
to  get  together.  We  need  the  world.  We  are  citizens 
in  the  kingdom  of  heaven,  and  that  is  a  large  situation 
and  full  of  souls  that  have  each  some  secret  of  theirs 
that  they  can  tell  us;  and  we  can  tell  them  something, 
too.  To  be  narrow,  to  be  closed  in,  boxed  up,  walled 


70  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


off,  is  unchristian,  unchurchly.  Each  of  all  the  churches 
in  the  city  would  be  richer  in  experience  and  in  power 
if  they  all  felt  that  they  were  leaning  some  of  the  weight 
on  each  other.  If  a  Presbyterian  bishop  would  accom¬ 
plish  that  for  the  Presbyterian  churches,  or  help  to,  I 
would  vote  for  a  bishop.  The  Catholics  have  a  Pope, 
and  their  part  of  the  church  universal  is  the  most  per¬ 
fect  of  any  for  unity,  organization  and  efficiency.  Cath¬ 
olic  territory  is  not  disfigured  by  fences.  It  is  a  great 
open  lot,  and  in  that  respect  is  closer  to  the  original 
church  ideal  than  any  other  denomination  or  sect.  Amal¬ 
gamation  stands  for  something,  therefore;  something 
precious,  something  near  the  heart  of  Christ;  for  it 
means  looking  upon  holy  matters  and  relations  in  a 
larger  way,  moving  from  a  spot — a  very  dear  and 
beautiful  spot — but  moving  from  a  spot  into  an  area; 
putting  the  emphasis  on  limitations  that  are  less  lim¬ 
ited,  drawing  into  a  wider  and  more  richly  peopled 
Christian  environment.” 

THREE  PERSONAL  REFERENCES 

Madison  Square  Church  people  justly  believed  that 
they  were  a  little  different  from  other  people  and  seem 
still  to  cherish  something  of  that  same  feeling.  While 
they  do  not  recognize  each  other  by  any  occult  sign  as 
do  members  of  a  secret  fraternity,  yet  there  is  some¬ 
thing  in  them  by  which  they  still  recognize  each  other. 
As  I  still  conceive  them,  there  is  something  of  Madison 
Square  about  them. 

It  would  be  pleasant  but  impolitic  to  make  particu¬ 
larized  mention  of  individual  members.  Hardly,  how- 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


71 


ever,  would  any  one  criticise  my  making  exceptional 
reference  to  three  who  sustained  such  a  relation  to  the 
church  and  to  myself  personally,  as  to  put  them  in  a 
class  by  themselves. 

The  first  of  these  is  Rev.  William  Adams,  D.D.,  the 
first  pastor  of  the  church.  He  had  not  only  been  its 
pastor  but  also  its  parent,  and  had  brought  it  up  and 
suffused  it  with  his  rich  and  genial  spirit.  It  had  or¬ 
ganized  itself  around  him,  and  was  therefore  naturally 
distinguished  by  those  same  qualities  of  grace,  refine¬ 
ment  and  culture.  The  church  was  in  that  way  a 
homogeneous  body,  even  as  the  members  of  a  family 
become  in  some  degree  duplicates  of  one  another 
through  community  of  birth  and  training.  There  was 
therefore  no  sharp  variety  of  personal  characteristics 
to  which  his  successor  had  to  adjust  himself. 

In  addition  to  that  was  the  beneficent  fact  that  he 
at  once  adopted  me  into  his  favor.  By  thus  creating 
a  tide  in  my  behalf  he  drew  the  congregation  after  him, 
and,  so  far  as  I  know,  neither  then  nor  at  any  subse¬ 
quent  time,  was  there  a  reluctant  or  disaffected  faction. 
Although  the  good  Doctor  lived  only  six  months  after 
I  became  pastor,  that  half  year  afforded  all  the  time 
that  was  required  to  secure  for  me  a  pleasant  and  a 
pretty  sure  place  in  the  regards  of  my  people. 

The  second  member  of  my  flock  to  whom  it  is  pleas¬ 
ant  and  proper  to  devote  a  few  words  of  grateful  and 
affectionate  recognition  is  George  W.  Lane.  He  too 
was  suddenly  taken  from  us  after  I  had  been  in  the 
pastorate  but  a  few  years;  but  during  those  years  and 
following  upon  the  six  months  during  which  I  had  had 


72  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


the  encouragement  of  Dr.  Adams,  Mr.  Lane,  I  might 
say,  was  the  entire  thing.  He  was  elder  and  trustee. 
And  whatever  he  said  carried.  The  congregation 
moved  after  him  as  the  flock  follows  the  shepherd.  He 
idolized  Madison  Square  Church.  It  was  to  him  a  big 
piece  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven  dropped  down  and 
planted  at  the  corner  of  Madison  Avenue  and  24th 
Street.  There  are  but  few  still  living  that  remember 
him,  but  those  who  do,  recall  the  large  warm  place 
which  at  that  time  he  filled  in  the  life  and  administra¬ 
tion  of  the  church.  I  have  met  few  men  who  were  as 
competent  as  he  so  to  harmonize  in  one  and  the  same 
personality,  obstinacy  and  grace.  He  was  stubborn, 
but  his  stubbornness  was  so  camouflaged  with  Christ- 
like  benignity  that  to  an  undiscriminating  observer  he 
would  have  passed  as  the  very  acme  of  docility.  To 
such  an  extent  had  he  come  to  dominate  my  life  and  to 
shape  my  judgment  that  when  there  arose  a  question 
in  regard  to  some  point  about  which  I  had  some  doubt 
but  that  I  wanted  to  introduce  into  the  funeral  address 
memorial  of  him  that  I  was  preparing,  it  occurred  to 
me  that  I  should  have  to  go  over  to  8  West  29th 
Street  and  ask  Mr.  Lane.  I  love  his  very  name. 

The  third  member  of  the  three  that  it  would  have 
been  felt  by  all  the  members  of  the  old  congregation  I 
ought  to  particularize  and  whom  therefore  I  can  name 
without  fear  of  criticism  is  Mr.  D.  Willis  James. 

He  had  formerly  been  a  member  of  the  Madison 
Square  Church,  and  returned  to  it  not  a  great  while 
after  I  had  become  its  pastor.  It  was  he  who  seems 
to  have  been  the  one  who  laid  the  wires  that  conducted 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


73 


me  to  Madison  Square,  although  I  believe  that  Bishop 
Potter  laid  claim  to  a  share  in  the  responsibility. 

I  have  already  stated  in  a  detailed  way  how  it  was 
that  he  first  came  into  my  life,  and  when  he  came  into 
my  life  he  came  there  to  stay.  After  the  death  of 
Mr.  Lane  I  was  guided  by  him  more  than  by  any  other. 
There  was  in  him  a  certain  prevision  or  power  of  rapid 
reasoning,  which  we  call  intuition,  that  enabled  him  to 
see  more  distinctly  what  others  saw,  but  also  to  see 
beyond  what  others  saw.  What  he  foresaw  came  to 
pass.  And  he  was  rich  emotionally  as  well  as  keen 
intellectually.  He  could  therefore  love  voluminously 
but  he  could  detest  terrifically.  In  whatever  direction 
his  thought  or  feeling  moved  he  let  his  entire  self  loose 
in  that  direction.  That  constituted  his  power,  as  he 
acted  wholly  and  not  fractionally.  He  loved  Madison 
Square  Church.  He  counselled  for  it,  he  prayed  for 
it,  and  in  a  royal  way  contributed  to  its  material  needs. 
He  was  built  on  a  large  scale  and  turned  all  his  dimen¬ 
sions  to  account. 

There  are  many,  very  many  more,  whose  names  are 
scored  deep  on  the  roll  of  memory,  each  of  whom  con¬ 
tributed  in  his  or  her  way  to  the  beauty  and  joy  of 
the  position  in  which  for  thirty-eight  pleasant  years  I 
exercised  my  Madison  Square  Church  pastorate. 

MY  SERMON  BEFORE  THE  AMALGAMATED 
CONGREGATION 

My  relation  to  the  amalgation  of  the  three  churches 
was  such  that  the  story  of  my  connection  even  with 
Madison  Square  would  not  be  quite  complete  unless  I 


74  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


appended  a  few  extracts  from  the  sermon  which  I  de¬ 
livered  on  the  first  Sunday  of  November,  1918,  on  the 
occasion  of  the  first  united  service  (held  in  the  Old 
First  Church)  of  the  Madison  Square,  Old  First  and 
University  Place  churches,  as  follows:  “So  unique  are 
the  circumstances  under  which  we  are  assembled  this 
morning  that  I  am  sure  the  event  will  constitute  a  mem¬ 
orable  paragraph  in  the  history  of  the  ecclesiastical  life 
of  this  city. 

“The  service  is  impressed  with  a  double  seriousness, 
the  seriousness  of  abandoning  so  much  that  has  been 
dear;  the  seriousness  of  committing  ourselves  to  so 
much  that  is  unknown. 

“In  the  confluence  of  three  congregations,  expressed 
by  our  present  assemblage,  the  Madison  Square  con¬ 
tingent  naturally  cherishes  a  Madison  Square  conscious¬ 
ness,  the  Old  First  contingent  an  Old  First  conscious¬ 
ness,  and  the  University  Place  a  University  Place  con¬ 
sciousness.  Not  labelled  externally,  internally  we  are 
labelled.  The  impression  of  our  history  is  upon  us,  and 
to  obliterate  that  impression  is  part  of  the  price  we 
have  to  pay  in  order  to  secure  a  successful  consolida¬ 
tion.  It  involves  a  sharp  break  with  the  past.  It  is  not 
simply  a  matter  of  cutting  off  the  stalk,  but  of  pluck¬ 
ing  up  the  root.  It  is  a  great  deal  to  pay,  but  we  can¬ 
not  purchase  great  things  with  small  money. 

“We  have  been  accustomed  to  use  the  terms  amalga¬ 
mation  and  consolidation.  I  raise  the  question,  not  out 
of  academic  interest,  but  with  a  view  to  practical  re¬ 
sults,  whether  that  mode  of  phrasing  does  not  leave 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


75 


unstated  one  aspect  of  our  present  situation  that  it  is 

essential  to  have  emphasized. 

“If  from  each  of  three  buildings  I  borrow  material 
to  be  incorporated  in  a  fourth,  that  fourth  structure  is 
not  the  continuation  of  one  or  all  of  the  three  ante¬ 
cedent  ones.  It  is  a  distinct  architectural  entity  with 
its  several  ingredients  organized  under  the  constraint 
of  a  definite  scheme  and  purpose  of  its  own.  If  it  is 
architecture  it  is  a  unit  and  not  a  composition.  The 
three  antecedent  buildings  have  given  up  their  life  in 
contributing  to  the  erection  of  a  distinct  architectural 
entity,  which  is  not  an  amalgam  and  is  as  exclusively 
itself  as  though  no  other  building  had  ever  existed. 

“A  more  apt  setting  forth  of  the  case  is  afforded  by 
St.  Paul's  illustration  when  he  said,  ‘That  which  thou 
sowest  is  not  quickened  except  it  die;  and  that  which 
thou  sowest  thou  sowest  not  that  body  that  shall  be/ 
Which  denotes,  as  we  very  well  understand,  that  the 
seed  which  is  planted  dies  in  giving  origin  to  the  new 
growth.  My  aim  in  this  is  that  we  should  exclude 
from  this  church  the  idea  of  plurality.  We  are  as 
much  one  as  though  it  were  the  first  church  that  ever 
existed. 

“Madison  Square  Church  is  dead.  The  Old  First 
Church  is  dead.  The  University  Place  Church  is  dead. 
There  were  three  parents  in  this  case  and  they  all  died 
in  giving  birth  to  this  child,  this  child  that  is  one  all 
the  way  through,  and  with  no  more  duality  or  triplicity 
attaching  to  it  than  attaches  to  your  boy,  because  it 
required  not  only  the  father  to  beget  him,  but  also  a 
mother  to  bear  him.  You  may  say  that  that  is  an  idea. 


76  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Yes,  it  is  an  idea,  and  ideas  are  serious  things  when 
they  are  as  true  as  this  and  warmly  and  sacredly  cher¬ 
ished.  And  by  such  cherishing  we  shall  be  individually 
making  a  large  contribution  to  the  success  of  this  in¬ 
stitution. 

“It  is  proper  and  necessary  to  expect  that  a  result 
which  has  been  purchased  at  the  tremendous  expense 
of  blotting  out  three  churches,  of  a  long  and  distin¬ 
guished  history,  will  be  prolific  in  magnificent  fruitage, 
otherwise  it  would  prove  an  investment  the  like  of 
which,  if  practiced  upon  the  street,  would  be  charge¬ 
able  with  the  grossest  and  most  pathetic  miscalcula¬ 
tion.  That  remark  proceeds  from  the  desire  that  hav¬ 
ing  paid  our  reverent  and  loving  respects  to  the  past, 
we  should  now  look  with  a  clear  and  confident  eye 
toward  the  future ;  that  we  should  at  this  moment  foster 
in  our  hearts  large  expectations;  that  we  should  enter 
into  coming  days  and  years  with  the  assurance  that  if 
all  conditions  are  properly  fulfilled  there  is  room  for 
larger  and  better  things  in  times  to  come  than  there 
has  been  in  times  past ;  and  that  assurance  is  not  merely 
a  bit  of  impulsive  optimism  but  in  strict  accord  with 
the  economy  of  God,  who  arranges  matters  along  the 
line  of  blade,  ear  and  full  corn  in  the  ear.  The  un¬ 
known  future  is  extending  to  this  church  a  beckoning 
hand. 

“The  church  does  not  count  for  all  that  it  ought  to 
in  critical  affairs  of  this  present  life.  The  church  and 
the  world  are  two  vast  oceans  whose  waters  too  rarely 
commingle.  There  are  problems  whose  proper  han¬ 
dling  bears  quite  as  certainly  upon  the  ennoblement  of 


MY  SECOND  PASTORATE 


77 


mankind  as  would  the  conversion  of  a  tribe  of  wild 
men  in  Borneo  or  Mongolia.  We  cannot  unify  church 
and  state,  neither  can  we  disentangle  them. 

“This  desire  can  be  expressed  by  saying  that  what 
is  needed  is  something  that  serves  the  purpose  that  a 
sounding-board  plays  in  a  musical  instrument,  which 
throws  the  music  out  into  the  air,  diffuses  it,  uni¬ 
versalizes  it.  Any  idea  or  purpose,  wherever  it  orig¬ 
inates,  whether  in  General  Assembly  or  in  Congress, 
that  makes  for  betterment,  that  deals  with  the  essential 
necessities  of  the  times,  that  makes  for  fundamental 
uplift,  that  adds  another  pure  sweet  note  to  the  music 
that  the  world  is  singing,  there  is  work  for  the  Church, 
work  for  this  Church. 

“O  God,  make  this  Church  a  mighty  instrument  in 
Thy  hands  for  the  achievement  of  Thy  holy  purposes, 
and  the  full  coming  in  of  Thy  kingdom.  Amen.” 


CHAPTER  V 


MOUNTAINEERING 


PRELIMINARY  OBSERVATIONS 

I  have  during  the  entire  period  of  my  ministry  been 
much  favored  by  my  people  in  the  matter  of  vacations. 
I  know  of  no  other  congregation  in  the  city  that  has 
been  so  generous  in  its  allotment  of  seasons  of  rest  as 
to  allow  an  annual  respite  of  four  months.  The  ex¬ 
pressed  expectation  of  getting  it  all  back  in  the  shape 
of  improved  service  during  the  remaining  eight  months 
may  or  may  not  have  been  disappointed.  This,  how¬ 
ever,  is  beyond  question  that  I  feel  the  result  of  those 
intermitted  periods  of  irresponsibility  in  my  present 
condition  of  health  and  strength. 

When  circumstances  allow  there  is  evident  advan¬ 
tage  in  having  a  portion  of  the  year  detached  from  the 
twelve  months  and  devoted  to  a  distinct  class  of  inter¬ 
ests  and  activities.  Our  fathers  knew  nothing  of  such 
an  arrangement  and  were  the  consequent  but  uncon¬ 
scious  sufferers.  People,  like  clocks,  stand  in  need  of 
periodic  winding.  Change  is  inherently  recreative. 
This  change  is  suggested  by  the  alternation  of  day  and 
night.  To  the  Hebrews  some  kind  of  periodic  break 
had  given  it  a  religious  sanction  and  was  made  a  fea¬ 
ture  of  the  Decalogue.  The  farmer’s  need  is  in  some 
measure  met  by  the  alternation  of  seasons,  each  bring- 

78 


MOUNTAINEERING 


79 


ing  with  it  its  own  peculiar  class  of  activities.  What 
is  required  is  not  so  much  inaction  as  diversity  of 
effort,  for  there  is  a  species  of  rest  that  is  enervating, 
which  not  only  does  not  fit  for  renewal  of  work,  but 
unfits  it,  and  carries  the  vital  forces  down  to  sub¬ 
normal. 

As  a  means  of  recreation,  golf  is  good,  as  is  boating, 
especially  the  former,  for  it  gives  opportunity  for  the 
play  of  feeling  even  up  to  the  point  of  enthusiasm;  yet 
there  can  be  no  mental  or  moral  uplift  in  chasing  a 
“pill”  over  level  ground.  This  latter  element,  however, 
I  have  found  in  mountain  work,  the  essential  benefits 
of  which  I  appreciate  even  after  years  of  abstinence. 

Mountain  climbing  is  fine  sport  if  indulged  in  tem¬ 
perately,  and  is  practically  free  from  danger  if  con¬ 
ducted  in  the  intelligent  observance  of  certain  estab¬ 
lished  rules  and  principles.  While  nature  in  all  her 
severer  aspects  requires  to  be  treated  with  respect  and 
even  with  reverence,  yet  with  that  condition  fulfilled 
she  shows  herself  not  only  tractable  but  kindly.  I  need 
not  say  that  those  adventurous  ascents  which  profes¬ 
sional  experts  make,  principally  for  the  reason  that  they 
are  venturesome,  I  did  not  undertake,  but  kept  close  to 
the  dividing  line  between  safety  and  hazard. 

When  asked,  as  I  often  am,  what  is  to  be  gained  by 
toiling  up  the  rough  and  strenuous  side  of  a  mountain 
that  cannot  equally  well  be  secured  by  viewing  through 
a  telescope,  comfortably  seated  on  the  verandah,  it  is 
difficult  to  reply.  Nothing  but  the  mountaineer’s  own 
experience  will  furnish  the  answer,  and  that  each  one 
has  to  gain  for  himself.  If  it  is  reasonable  to  ascend 


80  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


a  little  way  in  order  to  gain  a  more  expanded  view,  it 
is  by  the  law  of  proportion  many  times  more  reason¬ 
able  to  ascend  ten  or  twenty  times  that  distance  to  gain 
a  prospect  of  a  hundred  or  a  thousand  times  the  com¬ 
pass.  It  all  turns  on  the  keenness  of  one’s  sense  of 
natural  beauty.  There  are  some  people  with  whom  it 
is  impossible  to  exchange  views  on  certain  questions. 
People  who  think  in  a  different  vernacular  cannot  talk 
together. 

Personally  I  find  mountain  work  intoxicating.  It 
results  in  sleeplessness.  It  gives  to  my  nature  a  kind 
of  thrust  that  keeps  me  a-going  after  my  legs  stop 
functioning.  There  are  memory  pictures  in  my  mind 
that  are  as  distinct  at  this  moment  as  when  painted  there 
twenty-five  or  thirty  years  ago.  Such  pictures  are 
worth  infinitely  more  to  me  than  any  that  can  be  framed 
and  hung  upon  the  walls  of  one’s  room.  At  this  in¬ 
stant  I  am  surveying  a  panorama  that  includes  not  only 
Switzerland,  but  considerable  portions  of  France,  Ger¬ 
many,  Austria  and  Italy,  as  far  down  as  the  Italian 
Lakes.  There  is  education  in  such  experience;  mental 
and  moral  uplift.  It  has  been  said  that  the  undevout 
astronomer  is  mad.  So  I  would  say  that  the  undevout 
mountaineer  is  mad.  The  great  things  of  the  world 
are  the  only  ones  that  can  match  the  possibilities  of  the 
soul.  There  are  mountains  in  the  moon,  and  I  hope 
that  the  celestial  world  is  not  a  weary  stretch  of  monot¬ 
onous  level.  I  do  not  believe  there  could  be  a  prettier 
or  a  sublimer  heaven  than  this  present  world  offers  if 
only  sin  and  suffering  were  eliminated. 


MOUNTAINEERING 


81 


PREPARATORY  TRAINING 

While  the  bulk  of  my  mountain  exercise  was  taken 
in  Switzerland,  I  had  previously  done  enough  in  this 
country  to  be  assured  that  I  was  physically  equal  to 
any  ordinary  strain  of  that  kind  and  that  it  was  pleas¬ 
urably  remunerative.  In  the  White  Mountains  I  had 
climbed  Lafayette,  Chocorua,  and  twice  ascended  Mt. 
Washington,  once  by  the  Crawford  bridal  path  and 
once  by  the  mountain  railway  over  the  Jacob’s  Ladder. 
The  latter  trip  was  taken  under  adverse  conditions.  It 
was  late  in  the  season.  The  mountain  trains  had  been 
taken  off.  There  was  no  one  at  the  summit  but  the 
officer  in  charge  of  the  weather  bureau,  who  furnished 
me  such  entertainment  as  he  had  in  store ;  and  the  fog 
was  so  heavy  at  the  top  as  to  afford  me  no  view.  On 
the  whole,  it  was  not,  I  suppose,  an  altogether  prudent 
excursion.  It  was  experience,  however,  and  that  is 
always  an  asset. 

My  first  appetizing  taste  of  snow  work  was  while 
Mrs.  Parkhurst  and  myself  were  stopping  at  a  hotel 
on  the  Nordfiord  in  Norway.  I  heard  two  tourists 
planning  a  simple  trip  up  the  Folge  Fond  which  could 
be  made  in  a  few  hours,  and  joining  myself  to  them 
we  made  up  a  little  party,  employed  a  guide  and  made 
an  excursion  involving  no  difficulty  but  revealing  the 
fascination  that  distinguishes  that  kind  of  dissipation. 
The  day  was  bright  and  not  too  cold.  The  snow  was 
in  fine  condition,  hard  enough  to  bear  us  up  on  the 
ascent,  soft  enough  later  in  the  day  to  admit  of  our 
coasting  on  the  descent.  One  of  our  company,  a  tall 


82  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


young  Englishman,  clad  in  a  dress  suit  and  silk  hat, 
made  an  interesting  demonstration  of  himself  coasting 
down,  for  he  seemed  to  lack  the  knack  of  regulating 
himself ;  his  feet  went  faster  than  the  rest  of  him,  his 
legs  were  where  his  head  and  body  should  have  been 
and  his  top  hat  was  everywhere.  Fortunately  he  was 
able  to  gather  most  of  himself  together  before  reach¬ 
ing  a  precipitous  point  which  might  have  made  of  him 
a  perpetual  wreck.  I  remember  that  at  the  summit 
there  was  not  a  breath  stirring.  We  lay  out  upon  the 
snow  in  the  warm  sunshine  and  regaled  ourselves  upon 
the  charm  and  the  novelty  of  a  Scandinavian  land¬ 
scape. 

Norwegian  scenery  is  in  a  class  by  itself,  distin¬ 
guished  from  that  in  Switzerland  and  the  United 
States.  Its  peculiar  features  are  the  deep  inlets  along 
the  coast,  which,  by  admitting  the  warm  water  of  the 
Gulf  Stream,  save  the  country  from  the  barrenness  that 
marks  the  west  coast  of  the  Atlantic  at  the  same  lati¬ 
tude.  It  is  rather  strange  that  the  tide  of  travel  sets 
so  feebly  toward  Norway.  We  spent  a  part  of  two 
summers  there,  finding  that  the  inconveniences  of 
modes  of  conveyance  and  the  imperfection  of  hotel 
accommodations  were  more  than  balanced  by  the  pe¬ 
culiar  attractions  of  the  country,  especially  as  one 
travelled  further  and  further  toward  the  North  Cape. 
The  people  are  not  brilliant,  but  they  are  honest,  more 
and  more  so  according  to  the  distance  at  which  they 
live  from  the  civilization  of  Bergen,  Christiania  and 
Trondhjem, 


MOUNTAINEERING 


83 


ON  MY  WAY  TO  THE  SWISS  ALPS 

My  point  of  departure  was  Vevey,  a  little  Swiss 
village  on  the  north  shore  of  Lake  Geneva,  a  dozen 
miles  east  of  Lausanne.  The  beauty  of  the  surround¬ 
ing  country  held  me  till  the  summer  season  was  so  far 
advanced  as  to  be  uncomfortably  warm.  The  lake 
with  its  environment  is  some  of  the  Creator’s  best  work. 
It  can  hardly  lay  claim  to  grandeur,  but  I  have  been 
in  few  places  that  can  vie  with  it  in  elegant  comeliness. 
It  is  so  much  in  the  nature  of  a  picture  that  one  almost 
forgets  that  it  is  land  and  water. 

The  silence  of  its  waters  on  still  days  and  nights  is 
almost  audible,  matched  only  by  the  awfulness  of  the 
storms  which  rage  upon  it  when  nature  has  allowed 
her  feelings  to  be  moved  and  her  temper  to  be  aroused. 
With  the  exception  of  what  I  once  experienced  in  Gla¬ 
cier  Park,  in  the  shape  of  a  rainless  downpour  of  elec¬ 
tric  discharges,  an  incessant  rattling  of  celestial  artil¬ 
lery,  which  wrought  me  into  a  state  of  absolute  terror, 
I  have  seen  nothing  to  rival  the  effect  produced  on  Lake 
Geneva  when  a  storm  gathered  from  the  lower  end 
collides  with  another  developed  from  the  upper  end 
and  the  two  fight  it  out  together  to  their  mutual 
exasperation. 

Geneva,  Fernex,  Vevey,  Montreux;  who  can  have 
lived  and  breathed  among  them  and  not  have  carried 
away  in  his  heart  some  of  their  sweetness?  It  is  not 
surprising  to  learn  that  as  long  ago  as  the  early  days 
of  Rome  its  wealthy  aristocrats  established  their  coun¬ 
try  homes  along  the  lake  border. 


84  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Before  going  on  up  into  the  mountains  I  want  to 
hold  the  attention  of  my  reader  for  a  moment  to  the 
little  village  of  Fernex  just  mentioned.  It  is  only  a 
short  and  attractive  bicycle  run  from  Geneva.  Its  in¬ 
terest  is  due  to  the  fact  of  its  having  been  for  a  con¬ 
siderable  time  the  home  of  Voltaire  and  to  his  erection 
there  of  a  church  still  standing  and  bearing  upon  its 
face  the  inscription  “Erected  to  God.” 

Voltaire  was  cursed  by  his  French  contemporaries 
for  being  an  atheist,  and  their  cry  has  been  taken  up 
by  a  class  of  believers  who  find  an  inexplicable  but 
diabolic  pleasure  in  forestalling  divine  judgment  by 
inflicting  an  anticipatory  damnation  of  their  own. 
Building  churches  to  God  is  certainly  a  rather  peculiar 
style  of  atheistic  activity.  Voltaire  was  no  atheist,  but 
was  classed  as  such  because  of  his  expressed  hostility 
to  the  passionate  bigotry  of  French  Christianity,  and 
was  rewarded  for  his  orthodoxy  by  having  his  body 
stolen  by  night  from  the  church  where  it  had  been  for 
many  years  entombed,  carted  out  to  the  suburbs  of 
Paris,  thrown  into  a  hole  that  had  been  previously  dug 
for  it,  and  buried  like  a  dog.  France  would  today  be 
quite  another  country  from  what  it  is  but  for  the  way 
in  which  by  ostracism  and  assassination  it  has  despoiled 
itself  of  the  best  blood,  industrial,  mental  and  spiritual. 

With  the  increase  of  summer  heat  there  came  a  grow¬ 
ing  desire  to  quit  the  region  of  the  lake  for  higher  and 
cooler  ground.  Taking  the  Rhone  Valley  train  we 
found  ourselves  the  same  afternoon  at  Zermatt,  five 
thousand  feet  above  sea,  a  small,  dirty  village,  totally 
without  attraction,  save  as  it  gave  access  to  the  most 


MOUNTAINEERING 


85 


distinguished  heights  of  the  Valaisian  Alps,  among  them 
the  Matterhorn,  Weisshorn  and  Monte  Rosa.  Ninety- 
five  per  cent  of  those  who  visit  Zermatt  are  satisfied  to 
take  the  mountain  railway  to  Gorner  Gratt,  five  thou¬ 
sand  feet  higher,  a  point  of  magnificent  outlook  and 
not  at  all  to  be  despised  because  it  can  be  reached  with¬ 
out  effort.  But  riding  is  not  climbing  and  lacks  the 
stimulus  and  dignity  of  climbing,  and  men  who  have 
climbed  make  no  record  of  what  they  have  done  by  rail. 

On  first  arriving  I  had  no  mountaineering  aspira¬ 
tions,  although  made  more  susceptible  to  temptation 
probably  by  my  slight  experience  in  New  Hampshire. 
So  that  when  a  guide  proposed  to  me  an  easy  experi¬ 
mental  excursion,  I  tumbled  to  his  suggestion,  with 
the  result,  easy  to  be  anticipated,  that  I  walked  with 
him  five  successive  seasons. 

The  widely  circulated  stories  of  mountain  tragedies 
naturally  make  one  hesitate  to  submit  one’s  self  to 
mountaineering  exposures.  But  upon  making  a  rather 
careful  study  of  such  accidents  I  reached  the  conclu¬ 
sion  that  most  of  them  were  avoidable,  and  that  with 
reasonable  attention  to  a  few  simple  conditions  it  is 
about  as  safe  to  climb  the  slope  of  a  mountain  as  to 
walk  on  level  ground,  a  great  deal  more  so  than  to 
travel  the  streets  of  a  city  like  New  York. 

I  would  like  to  encourage  among  young  men  the 
mountain  habit,  both  because  it  is  healthy  and  exhil¬ 
arating;  and  therefore  state  here,  very  briefly  and  for 
their  benefit,  some  of  the  conditions  that  need  to  be 
fulfilled  as  a  guarantee  of  safety. 

One  should  not  undertake  heavy  work  till  legs,  lungs 


86  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


and  heart  have  been  subjected  to  a  climbing  strain  of 
moderation.  A  young  American  thinks  himself  equal 
to  whatever  anyone  else  has  done.  It  shows  a  spirit 
which  if  held  under  restriction  is  full  of  achievement, 
but  otherwise  is  capable  of  mischief,  as  in  the  instance 
of  an  intimate  friend  who  carried  his  Americanism  to 
the  point  of  audacity,  subjected  himself  without  prep¬ 
aration  to  a  moderately  long  and  difficult  pull  and  suf¬ 
fered  for  six  months  in  consequence.  For  such  under¬ 
takings  something  more  is  necessary  than  ordinary 
sound  health.  For  the  ascent  sound  heart  and  good 
lungs  are  of  course  indispensable;  also  good  knees, 
which  take  the  strain  on  the  descent.  In  rough  work 
the  descent  is  more  trying  than  the  ascent. 

The  next  essential  is  a  guide  of  established  character 
and  prolonged  experience.  In  Switzerland  that  de¬ 
partment  of  service  is  under  government  supervision. 
No  one  can  act  as  first  guide  without  a  license.  For¬ 
merly  such  license  was  not  required,  but  government 
stepped  in  when  it  was  discovered  that  tourists  were 
being  lost  by  incompetent  guides  and  that  climbers 
were  being  deliberately  murdered  on  the  route  and  their 
pockets  rifled. 

Each  guide  has  in  his  possession  a  book  issued  by 
government,  in  which  is  contained  the  record  of  his 
license,  and  also  statements,  inscribed  by  previous  tour¬ 
ists,  of  their  opinion  of  the  particular  guide  in  question 
as  to  character,  ability  and  fidelity.  All  of  which 
affords  the  intending  tourist  a  satisfactory  basis  upon 
which  to  act.  Once  only  did  I  come  near  getting  into 
trouble  by  engaging  a  guide  who  was  not  in  a  reliable 


MOUNTAINEERING 


87 


condition,  a  condition  due  to  too  much  wedding  recep¬ 
tion.  Much  depends  also  on  the  amateur’s  disposition 
to  renounce  his  own  sense  of  sufficiency  and  to  put 
himself  absolutely  at  the  disposal  of  his  leader  and  to 
do  his  bidding  without  asking  why. 

Yet  with  all  these  precautions  observed,  accidents 
do  sometimes  occur  and  even  professionals  occasionally 
come  to  grief.  My  own  guide,  who  served  me  for 
five  years  and  had  previously  travelled  the  mountains 
for  more  than  that  length  of  time,  lost  his  life  on  Dent 
Blanche,  in  a  tragedy  which  was  almost  the  exact 
duplicate  of  the  Whymper  disaster  which  occurred  on 
the  Matterhorn  many  years  ago.  Three  guides,  includ¬ 
ing  my  own,  and  one  tourist  lost  their  lives  owing  to 
the  breaking  of  a  rope.  I  always  refused  to  be  at¬ 
tached  to  the  same  rope  as  another  amateur.  Only 
once  in  all  my  experience  on  the  mountains  did  I  feel 
myself  to  be  in  danger. 

MOUNTAIN  ASCENTS 

Arriving  at  Zermatt,  I  was  at  the  lower  edge  of  a 
wonderful  world,  ringed  about  by  mountainous  masses 
varying  in  height  from  ten  to  fifteen  thousand  feet. 
Mountains  usually  grow  in  clusters.  Zermatt  was  at 
the  center  of  one  such  cluster.  It  was  placed  on  low 
central  ground,  with  a  valley  extending  all  the  way 
down  to  the  Rhone — an  arrangement  which  we  might 
think  was  contrived  in  the  interest  of  mountaineers, 
and  incidentally  for  the  convenience  of  a  secondary 
class  of  people  who  find  a  reposeful  enjoyment  in  mag¬ 
nificence  but  who  are  contented  to  gain  only  so  much 


88  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


of  it  as  is  obtainable  without  becoming  physically  stren¬ 
uous — the  hotel  verandah  mountaineers. 

MONTE  ROSA 

Mountaineering  is  a  good  deal  of  a  gamble,  however 
careful  the  thought  expended  in  arranging  for  it. 
Weather  among  the  mountains  is  fickle  and  disap¬ 
points  the  most  studied  prognostications  and  most  care¬ 
ful  consultation  of  wind,  temperature  and  barometer. 

One  of  the  climbs  from  which  I  had  expected  the 
most,  and  which  cost  me  as  much  effort  as  any  I  have 
made,  was  the  one  up  Monte  Rosa,  and  it  is  the  one 
that  was  more  disappointing  than  any  other.  It  took 
me  from  my  bed  at  midnight  and  brought  me  back  to 
my  starting  place  late  in  the  afternoon.  At  twelve 
o’clock  the  sky  was  clear  and  bright  and  full  of  stars, 
made  brilliant  by  the  thinness  of  the  atmosphere,  for 
we  were  then  seven  thousand  feet  above  the  sea,  two 
thousand  above  Zermatt. 

Our  first  move  was  upon  a  descending  path  of  several 
hundred  feet  which  took  us  down  to  the  Gorner  Gla¬ 
cier,  which  had  to  be  crossed  in  order  to  bring  us  to 
where  we  could  make  straight  work  up  to  our  objective 
point,  which  was  Dafour  Spitze,  the  supreme  pinnacle 
of  Rosa.  The  Glacier  here  is  about  a  mile  broad,  bear¬ 
ing  upon  its  surface,  halfway  across,  a  big  medial 
moraine,  made  up  of  rocks  which  the  glacier  had  picked 
up  on  its  way  down  from  the  snow-fields.  Moraines, 
whether  medial,  terminal  or  lateral,  are  the  climber’s 
bete  noire.  The  accumulations,  collected  from  years 


MOUNTAINEERING 


89 


and  centuries  of  deposit,  sometimes  become  enormous 
and  are  a  coarse  offense  to  the  tourist. 

Once  on  the  other  side  of  the  glacier  we  were  in 
position  for  a  straight  climb  of  8000  feet.  After  the 
first  quarter  of  that  distance  had  been  made  the  sky 
was  beginning  to  become  overcast,  a  sorry  omen.  A 
wind  with  increasing  force  was  blowing  from  Italy. 
As  we  ascended  into  higher  and  colder  air  a  few  snow¬ 
flakes  commenced  to  fall,  but  in  that  dilatory  way  that 
implied  a  force  still  held  in  reserve.  By  the  time  we 
had  accomplished  seven  out  of  our  eight  thousand  feet 
it  had  become  bitterly  cold  and  the  air  was  so  dense 
with  snow-flakes  that  objects  twenty  feet  away  were 
only  indistinctly  visible. 

At  that  point  we  stopped  for  a  moment  to  consider. 
The  outlook  was  unpropitious.  In  fact  there  was  no 
outlook.  It  was  so  cold  that  the  color  of  my  guide’s 
face  was  a  yellowish  green.  It  interested  me,  for  I 
had  never  before  seen  a  person  that  looked  so  much  as 
though  he  were  nearly  frozen  to  death.  He  told  me 
that  my  face  looked  just  as  his  did.  I  wished  that  I 
had  a  glass  so  that  I  could  see  myself.  He  told  me  that 
the  last  thousand  feet  was  the  stiffest  of  the  entire 
ascent.  I  believed  him  for  from  Gorner  Gratt  I  had 
studied  that  section  with  a  glass.  I  told  him  that  if  I 
was  going  to  run  any  risk  by  going  to  the  top  I  would 
not  attempt  it,  but  that  otherwise  I  was  going  to  go  on. 

Having  disencumbered  ourselves  of  every  bit  of  our 
baggage  that  we  could  dispense  with,  his  bottle  of  wine 
and  my  bottle  of  tea  (which  Mrs.  Parkhurst  had 
brewed  for  me  and  which  contained  just  enough  of 


90  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


prohibition  kick  to  add  a  little  tension  to  my  nerves), 
we  continued  our  ascent  to  the  summit.  It  was  not 
pretty  but  it  was  glorious.  We  were  in  the  midst  of  a 
big  white  world,  the  wind  from  the  south  blowing  at 
a  rate  of  not  less  than  sixty  to  seventy  miles  an  hour 
and  the  snow  falling  in  drifts.  I  said  that  the  trip  was 
disappointing.  In  one  sense  it  was.  It  was  disappoint¬ 
ing  in  the  sense  that  we  stood  at  a  point  from  which, 
in  clear  weather,  there  is  a  view  second  in  grandeur  to 
scarcely  anything  else  in  Switzerland,  and  with  such 
weather  as  we  were  in  we  could  not  see  a  thing.  But 
it  was  immensely  satisfying  in  this  way,  that  I  had  a 
strange  sense  of  what  was  invisible.  I  felt  the  grand 
presence  of  what  I  could  not  see.  Physically  it  was 
not  there,  but  spiritually  it  was  there,  and  even  what 
was  distant  was  felt  by  me  to  be  close  to.  It  was  a 
unique  experience.  There  is  nothing  like  it  in  New 
York.  Descending  I  picked  up  my  bottle  of  tea,  which 
was  frozen  solid — “Iced  tea.” 

A  little  way  back  I  had  occasion  to  refer  to  Gorner 
Glacier.  Glacier  peculiarities  are  interesting,  and  any 
of  my  readers  unacquainted  with  them  may  like  to  have 
a  few  particulars  stated.  Glaciers  might  be  called 
frozen  rivers,  and  in  many  respects  they  preserve  the 
character  of  rivers.  They  derive  their  supply  from  the 
elevated  snow  fields  as  rivers  derive  their  contents 
from  the  uplands.  They  move  as  rivers  move,  al¬ 
though  with  a  movement  so  slow  as  not  to  be  imme¬ 
diately  perceptible.  They  resemble  a  river  in  this  re¬ 
spect,  also,  that  their  movement  is  more  rapid — if  the 
word  “rapid”  be  admissible — at  the  middle  than  at  the 


MOUNTAINEERING 


91 


sides.  That  is  the  reason  why  when  Mark  Twain 
wanted  to  come  down  from  Riffle  Alp  to  Zermatt  he 
had  his  baggage  moved  out  to  the  middle  of  the  glacier. 
That  such  is  the  case  is  proved  in  this  way:  if  a  stake 
is  driven  into  the  ground  at  each  of  the  two  sides  of 
the  glacier,  and  stakes  be  driven  into  the  ice  of  the 
glacier  itself  at  intervals  of  ten  or  fifteen  feet,  but  in 
such  a  way  that  those  at  the  sides  and  those  on  the  ice 
form  a  straight  line,  it  will  be  found  after  twenty-four 
hours  that  the  stakes  no  longer  form  a  straight  line 
but  a  curve,  with  the  ones  nearer  the  center  having  ad¬ 
vanced  further  than  those  toward  the  sides.  Even  the 
one  at  the  center  will  not  have  moved  more  than  from 
two  to  six  inches,  so  that  Mark  Twain’s  baggage  would 
have  required  many  years  to  arrive  at  Zermatt. 

Reference  to  glacier  movement  brings  to  mind  an 
interesting  incident,  although  one  of  a  rather  ghastly 
character,  which  was  widely  reported  in  Switzerland 
but  which  may  not  have  reached  the  United  States. 
About  seventy  years  ago  three  Englishmen  were  walk¬ 
ing  up  the  Glacier  des  Boissons,  in  the  neighborhood  of 
Chamounix.  One  of  them,  while  standing  at  the  edge 
of  a  crevasse,  slipped  and  fell  in.  Its  depth  was  so 
great  as  to  render  recovery  impossible.  Of  course,  he 
was  soon  frozen  to  death,  even  if  the  fall  itself  had 
not  killed  him.  He  became  necessarily  an  ice-preserved 
integral  part  of  the  ice-river,  borne  along  down  by  its 
flow  as  a  log  is  carried  by  a  stream  of  water.  Some 
calculation  was  made  as  to  the  number  of  years  that 
would  elapse  before  the  body  would  emerge  at  the  foot 
of  the  glacier.  I  do  not  remember  how  exact  the  calcu- 


92  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


lation  was,  but  at  any  rate  the  body  appeared  after 
about  fifty  years  with  the  freshness  of  early  life  still 
upon  it.  For  it  had  simply  been  kept  in  cold  storage. 

One  of  the  three  that  had  walked  the  glacier  together 
half  a  century  before  was  still  living  and  at  his  home 
in  England.  Upon  receiving  a  telegram  he  came  down 
and  attended  at  Chamounix  the  funeral  of  his  old  tour¬ 
ist  companion.  Objects  other  than  this  of  the  human 
body  have  emerged  in  the  same  way  after  a  great  lapse 
of  years.  An  umbrella  that  I  accidentally  dropped  into 
a  crevasse  while  going  over  the  Alphubel  Joch  must 
by  this  time  be  well  on  its  way  to  the  Sass  Valley.  It 
would  be  an  interesting  object  when  it  reappears.  I 
would  reward  the  finder  liberally  if  I  could  receive  it 
from  him  as  a  trophy  of  my  mountaineering. 

I  have  myself  been  far  enough  down  on  the  inside 
of  a  crevasse  to  test  its  frigidity  and  appreciate  its 
sublimity.  While  descending  a  glacier  on  my  way  down 
to  the  Rhone  Valley  I  gained  a  closer  acquaintance  with 
one  of  these  objects  than  is  usual  to  the  amateur  tourist. 
The  air  was  so  thick  with  snow  that  we  could  see  but  a 
little  way  in  front  of  us,  and  could  keep  our  direction 
only  by  turning  around  and  consulting  the  foot-tracks 
we  had  just  left  behind  us,  when  we  suddenly  came 
upon  the  brink  of  one  of  these  yawning  chasms. 

How  deep  it  was  we  were  of  course  unable  to  con¬ 
jecture,  for  they  sometimes  extend  down  for  hundreds 
of  feet.  It  was  too  broad  to  jump,  and  to  flank  it 
would  involve  a  disagreeable  amount  of  extra  travel. 
The  plan  adopted  would  have  seemed  to  me  unduly 


MOUNTAINEERING 


93 


hazardous  except  when  executed  by  a  guide  as  careful 
and  experienced  as  my  own. 

A  crevasse  is  shaped  like  a  V,  more  or  less  broad 
at  the  top,  but  with  the  sides  gradually  approaching 
each  other  as  the  cleavage  extends  down  into  the  mas¬ 
sive  body  of  the  ice.  From  that  it  follows  that  by 
descending  into  the  crevasse  one  comes  closer  and  closer 
to  the  point  where  the  approaching  sides  would  be  only 
a  moderate  distance  apart.  That  will  be  intelligible  to 
the  reader  if  he  keeps  in  mind  the  shape  of  the  letter  V. 
It  was  in  view  of  that  condition  of  things  that  my 
leading  guide  (I  had  two)  acted.  He  commenced  to 
cut  steps  one  below  another  on  the  hither,  nearly  per¬ 
pendicular,  side  of  the  crevasse,  I  following  as  he  ad¬ 
vanced  downward,  the  rear  guide  with  the  rope  (to 
which  the  forward  guide  and  myself  were  attached) 
holding  us  in  check  as  safeguard  in  case  of  a  slip. 
At  this  moment  I  cannot  imagine  how  he  would  have 
been  able  to  save  us  if  either  of  us  had  made  a  false 
step.  But  under  such  circumstances  one  is  not  sup¬ 
posed  to  make  a  false  step.  It  is  good  schooling  in  the 
art  of  “minding  your  steps.” 

I  do  not  know  how  far  down  we  went.  I  was  too 
intent  on  my  steps  to  take  account  of  distance  and  too 
considerate  of  the  abyss  of  unknown  depth  beneath  to 
allow  my  eye  to  attempt  to  fathom  that  depth.  It  was 
all  very  interesting,  but  not  pretty.  It  was  a  big  relief 
when  the  guide,  who  was  doing  the  cutting,  said,  “Now 
I  guess  we  can  safely  step  across.  Remain  carefully 
where  you  are  and  I  will  commence  a  stairway  up  on 
the  opposite  face.”  After  advancing  far  enough  with 


94  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


ascending  stair-cutting  to  make  a  clear  way  for  me,  I 
crossed  over  and  followed  him  step  by  step  till  we 
emerged  once  more  at  the  surface.  As  he  often  said 
to  me,  “There  is  no  danger  in  doing  these  things  if  a 
deliberate  amount  of  time  is  given  to  them.” 

THE  WEISSHORN" 

The  Dom  is  one  of  the  giants  of  the  region,  the 
highest  mountain  in  Switzerland  proper  (Mont  Blanc 
is  not  in  Switzerland,  but  partly  in  France  and  partly 
in  Italy),  but  its  ascent  is  void  of  interest.  It  is  all 
snow-work,  but  affords  unlimited  opportunity  for  ski¬ 
ing.  We  encountered  a  burning  sun  at  the  summit.  It 
was  the  only  climb  in  which  I  had  an  experience  of 
hemorrhage,  which  was  only  slight. 

The  Weisshorn  is  another  matter.  I  admire  it  for 
its  beauty  and  treasure  my  memory  of  its  difficulty.  It 
is  a  conspicuous  figure  as  seen  from  the  Riffle  and 
from  Gorner  Gratt.  It  is  a  rock,  snow  and  ice  pile, 
triangular  in  shape,  culminating  in  a  definitely  marked 
apex.  It  is  in  the  main  beautifully  white,  and  when 
seen  glistening  in  the  sunshine  and  tipped  with  a  cloud- 
banner,  is  an  object  of  surpassing  splendor;  and  when 
the  evening  light  and  the  evening  stillness  begin  to 
gather  about  it,  it  challenges  our  reverence.  The  quar¬ 
ter  hour  I  once  passed  in  contemplating  it  from  Gorner 
Gratt  under  those  conditions  is  one  of  my  most  treas¬ 
ured  experiences  of  Switzerland.  But  it  cannot  be 
read;  it  must  be  felt  in  order  to  be  known. 

Our  first  attempt  to  make  the  Weisshorn  was  a  fail¬ 
ure.  When  about  three  thousand  feet  short  of  the 


MOUNTAINEERING 


95 


summit  ominous  weather  signs  discouraged  our  prog¬ 
ress,  and  snow,  which  had  been  falling  in  an  irresolute 
kind  of  way,  assumed  a  more  determined  spirit  and 
imposed  upon  us  a  veto  to  which  our  guides,  of  which 
we  had  three,  including  the  carrier,  did  not  dare  show 
disrespect.  Snow  in  itself  considered  is  not  a  fatal  ob¬ 
struction,  as  is  evidenced  by  our  successful  capture  of 
Monte  Rosa.  But  in  that  case  the  way  was  plain.  That 
is  to  say,  there  were  no  points  that  were  perilously 
tricky.  For  that  ascent,  notwithstanding  its  excep¬ 
tional  height,  I  required  only  one  guide.  On  the  Weiss- 
horn,  per  contra,  there  were  a  number  of  funny  spots, 
exceedingly  interesting  ones,  but  such  as  did  not  need  to 
have  their  interest  augmented  by  the  introduction  of 
avoidable  difficulties. 

The  second  attempt  was  made  under  more  favorable 
conditions,  in  the  finest  of  weather,  under  a  clear  sky 
and  with  moderate  temperature.  It  is  not  a  height  that 
one  can  assail  in  a  playful  mood.  After  two  or  three 
miles’  walk  down  the  valley,  and  as  much  more  through 
the  lower  slopes — where  it  was  somewhat  toilsome,  but 
perfectly  plain  work — from  that  point  on  it  was  busi¬ 
ness  all  the  way  up  and  especially  all  the  way  down. 

Having  accomplished  all  that  preceded  the  strenuous 
portion  of  our  problem,  we  camped  for  the  night,  or 
at  least  till  past  midnight.  The  night  at  that  stage  of 
the  journey  was  cold.  There  had  been  a  tourist’s  hut 
at  that  point,  but  the  front  had  fallen  down,  the  ends 
had  fallen  in,  the  roof  naturally  enough  had  collapsed, 
and  nearly  all  that  was  left  was  the  floor  and  a  big 
boulder  against  which  the  hut  had  originally  been  built. 


96  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


I  remember  the  thrilling  quietness  of  that  night.  The 
world  seemed  big  and  lonely.  It  was  awfully  still,  with 
a  stillness  that  was  only  occasionally  broken  by  the 
rolling  down  from  the  heights  above  us  of  a  stone  that 
had  dislodged  itself  from  the  ice.  As  day  began 
to  dawn  we  made  a  fire,  cooked  coffee,  snatched  a 
hasty  breakfast  and  moved  on.  Between  our  camping- 
ground  and  the  summit  there  were  two  passages  at 
which  the  interest  of  the  climb  centered.  The  rest  of 
the  way  it  was  a  steady  matter  of  finding  our  way  up 
over  an  ungraded  roadway  where  there  was  no  road 
and  one  rock  served  as  stepping-stone  to  the  one  above 
it.  It  was  not  easy  nor  was  there  any  danger. 

A  little  further  on  we  struck  an  arete,  which  it  took 
an  hour  to  traverse.  It  lay  nearly  horizontal,  but  it 
was  a  ridge  of  only  about  two  feet  in  breadth  which 
formed  the  juncture  of  two  slopes,  each  of  which  ex¬ 
tended  down  without  any  considerable  break  for  not 
less  than  two  thousand  feet.  One  can  easily  picture 
the  situation.  A  person  inclined  to  dizziness  would 
have  stood  no  chance. 

What  enhanced  the  precariousness  of  our  path  was 
the  fact  that  it  was  slippery.  Two  or  three  inches  of 
snow  had  lain  upon  it  which  the  sun  had  so  softened 
as  to  render  it  unreliable.  The  rope  was  kept  taut 
between  us,  and  when  the  path  narrowed  down  to  only 
a  little  more  than  a  foot  in  width  the  two  guides  re¬ 
mained  stationary,  while  one  paid  out  the  rope  and  the 
other  paid  it  in.  It  was  tedious  but  it  was  experience, 
and  was  accomplished  without  a  fault  by  any  of  the 
party.  Danger  was  practically  eliminated  by  the  pa- 


MOUNTAINEERING 


97 


tience  and  confident  caution  of  all  the  parties  involved. 
After  so  many  years  I  could  make  a  picture  of  that 
arete  and  of  the  three  mountaineers  that  would  be 
very  true  to  the  original.  Such  pictures  contain  too 
much  to  admit  of  being  put  upon  canvas. 

Between  the  ridge  just  described  and  the  summit  was 
another  passage  more  critical,  and  unquestionably  dan¬ 
gerous,  which  I  would  on  no  account  repeat.  It  was 
an  ice-field,  lying  at  about  the  angle  just  stated  and 
extending  down  to  as  great  a  distance  as  the  slopes  I 
have  mentioned.  The  ice  was  as  solid  as  either  nature 
or  art  could  produce.  Each  step  was  cut  with  an  axe. 
There  was  upon  it  no  surface  that  had  been  softened 
by  the  sun  and  which,  had  such  a  surface  existed,  would 
have  helped  to  prevent  our  slipping.  If  either  of  us 
had  stumbled  there  was  nothing  we  could  have  caught 
hold  of  that  would  have  sustained  us ;  and  the  ice  was 
so  glassy  that,  if  one  had  slipped,  hob-nailed  shoes 
would  not  have  saved  us,  for  the  strain  upon  the  other 
two  would  have  been  so  great  as  to  be  irresistible  and 
we  should  all  three  of  us  have  slidden  down  into  eternity 
together. 

Such  is  the  simple  prose  representation  of  the  situa¬ 
tion.  I  partially  realized  it  during  the  half  hour  we 
spent  in  going  up  and  another  half  hour  in  coming 
down,  but  I  realize  it  perfectly  now  and  on  no  account 
would  I  repeat  it.  Mountains  are  not  playthings.  Even 
in  their  more  genial  moods  they  exact  from  us  respect, 
and  in  their  savage  aspects  they  command  our  homage. 
I  am  glad  though  that  I  did  it.  It  is  delightful  to 
bask  in  nature’s  smiles,  and  a  God  of  love  could  hardly 


98  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


have  made  a  world  that  did  not  exhibit  some  features 
of  grace  and  tenderness.  It  is  likewise  wholesome  to 
face  nature’s  frowns;  and  a  God  whom  Scripture  rep¬ 
resents  as  “mighty  and  terrible”  could  hardly  have 
made  a  world  in  which  those  attributes  also  did  not 
find  their  imposing  expression. 


CHAPTER  VI 


THE  ASCENT  OF  THE  MATTERHORN 

The  village  of  Zermatt  is  situated  about  twenty  miles 
from  the  Rhone  Valley  and  connected  with  it  by  rail. 
It  is  a  dirty,  squalid  little  town  with  narrow,  crooked 
streets  paved  with  cobble-stones  and  housing  a  very 
small  population,  but  containing  three  large  hotels  for 
the  accommodation  of  tourists.  Strangers  arriving  in 
bad  weather  and  unacquainted  with  points  of  interest 
that  the  place  gives  access  to,  are  apt  to  return  to  the 
Rhone  Valley  at  once,  considering  a  single  glimpse  of 
the  place  quite  sufficient. 

The  practical  interest  of  the  town  to  the  tourist  lies 
in  the  fact  that  it  not  only  gives  easy  approach  by  rail 
to  Gorner  Gratt,  a  superb  point  of  observation  ten 
thousand  feet  above  sea  level,  and  environed  by  a  group 
of  notable  mountains  (for  big  mountains,  like  big  men, 
usually  grow  in  clusters),  but  affords  the  gateway  of 
access  to  those  mountains  and  the  path  to  their  ascent — 
distinguished  among  which  is  the  Matterhorn. 

Among  Swiss  mountains  the  Matterhorn  has  a  dis¬ 
tinction  that  is  all  its  own.  It  has  been  so  often  pic¬ 
tured  that  its  form  is  familiar  even  to  those  who  have 
never  visited  Switzerland. 

It  wears  an  aspect  so  grim  as  to  render  it  forbidding 
and  presents  such  an  attitude  of  challenge  as  to  provoke 

99 


100  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


the  beholder  to  assault.  It  is  the  mountain  of  tragedy, 
and  the  fruits  of  its  savagery  are  to  be  found  far  and 
near,  notably  in  the  little  cemetery  at  Zermatt.  The 
story  of  Whymper  and  of  the  four  who,  on  the  break¬ 
ing  of  the  rope  that  held  them  together,  went  flying 
through  space  and  whose  bodies,  all  but  one,  were  re¬ 
covered  from  the  snows  far  down  on  the  northern 
slope  (and  that  one  may  eventually  emerge  at  the  foot 
of  the  glacier),  has  been  told  so  many  times  as  to  call 
for  no  repetition  here. 

Although  I  have  described  the  mountain  as  being 
grim  in  its  aspect,  yet  there  are  times  when  it  is  made 
sublime  by  being  partially  invested  with  fog,  and  even 
beautiful  if  its  summit  is  tufted  with  a  cloud-banner. 
To  know  the  mountain  one  should  view  it  under  its 
various  aspects,  but,  in  order  to  be  really  familiarly 
acquainted  with  it,  one  should  climb  it. 

The  world-wide  reputation  of  the  mountain  and  the 
numerous  disasters  suffered  by  those  that  were  at¬ 
tempting  to  scale  it  made  me  naturally  hesitant  to  ex¬ 
pose  myself  to  what  purported  to  be  its  perils.  Peril, 
however  is  largely  a  matter  of  personal  disqualification 
for  encountering  the  peril.  Almost  any  expedition  is 
dangerous  unless  undertaken  with  an  equipment  ad¬ 
justed  to  existing  conditions.  By  mountain  work  in 
Switzerland  and  elsewhere  I  had  had  experience  of 
the  essentials  of  such  equipment,  and  had  come  to 
realize  that  as  a  rule  peril  was  not  massed  at  a  single 
point  but  was  graciously  distributed  along  the  entire 
line  of  ascent,  so  that  if  I  was  continuously  circum¬ 
spect  I  stood  good  chance  of  success.  Moreover  from 


ASCENT  OF  THE  MATTERHORN  101 


Gorner  Gratt  I  had  had  frequent  opportunities  to  in¬ 
spect  the  monster  and  roughly  to  trace  the  path  (which 
was  not  always  much  of  a  path)  that  extended  from 
base  to  summit:  all  of  which  tended  to  induce  on  my 
part  a  kindly  sentiment  toward  the  object  of  my  en¬ 
deavor. 

There  was  also  the  fact  that  although  the  summit 
was  14,000  feet  above  sea  level,  Zermatt,  the  point  at 
which  ascent  commenced,  had  already  an  altitude  of 
5000  feet,  which  left  a  remainder  of  only  9000;  from 
which  latter  figure  there  was  a  further  subtraction  to 
be  made  of  3000  feet,  the  distance  in  altitude  from 
Zermatt  to  an  upper  hotel  which  was  reached  over 
open  comfortable  ground  rather  steep  in  places,  but 
easily  and  safely  traversed  without  a  guide  and  with 
no  suggestion  of  strain  or  peril ;  so  that  there  remained 
only  about  a  mile  and  a  quarter  of  actual  perpendicular 
ascent, — quite  unimportant  when  considered  arithme¬ 
tically  but  sufficiently  significant  when  experienced 
pedestrianly. 

The  Matterhorn  is  massive  rock,  as  solid  as  on  the 
day  when  by  some  mysterious  convulsion  of  nature 
it  was  thrust  up  among  the  clouds.  The  scaling  of  it 
was  slightly  facilitated  by  the  fact  that  in  places  the 
stratification  is  tilted  at  such  an  angle  as  to  furnish 
something  like  steps,  which  give  to  the  foot  a  conven¬ 
ient  and  substantial  point  of  support.  Such  geologi¬ 
cal  condition  was  the  exception  fof  the  storms  and 
tempests  of  uncounted  ages  have  plowed  into  and 
wrecked  what  must  have  been  the  original  formation 
and  left  little  of  original  structure  remaining,  for  even 


102  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


the  mountains  decay,  and  century  by  century  subside 
toward  a  level  with  the  valley. 

In  the  afternoon  of  the  day  on  which  I  commenced 
my  ascent  I  leisurely  traversed  the  three  thousand  feet 
of  altitude  already  noted,  to  a  mountain  hotel  which 
afforded  all  the  conveniences  naturally  required  by 
guests  seeking  entertainment  at  that  elevation.  Here 
I  joined  the  two  guides  with  whom  I  had  previously 
arranged.  After  we  had  dined  and  they  had  laid  in  a 
supply  of  bread,  coffee,  chocolate  and  wine, — wine  suf¬ 
ficient  to  take  us  up  and  back,  with  a  sufficient  over¬ 
plus  to  keep  them  in  good  spirits  after  we  had  gotten 
back, — we  made  a  quiet  start. 

I  am  particular  to  say  a  quiet  start,  for  there  is  much 
involved  in  commencing  a  high  climb  easily,  in  adjust¬ 
ing  one’s  pace  to  the  grade,  and  one’s  respiration  to 
the  thinness  of  the  atmosphere;  for  at  that  altitude 
atmospheric  pressure  was  already  considerably  reduced 
and  it  would  become  more  and  more  so  as  we  ascended. 
When  put  to  an  unusual  task  the  body  should  be  treated 
with  great  consideration.  I  mention  these  particulars, 
for  some  one  who  reads  this  account  may  be  contem¬ 
plating  mountaineering  and  be  aided  by  these  practical 
suggestions. 

The  entire  ascent  may  be  briefly  described  as  being 
a  continued  process  of  overcoming  what  at  first  sight 
appear  to  be  insuperable  difficulties.  In  course  of  time 
one  becomes  in  a  measure  accustomed  to  them,  but  even 
so  to  an  amateur  they  never  altogether  part  with  their 
originality.  The  guides  of  course  were  never  fazed 
by  them,  for  to  them  any  angle  less  than  seventy  de- 


ASCENT  OF  THE  MATTERHORN  103 


grees  means  practically  level  ground.  Obstacles  they 
always  find  some  means  of  circumventing.  That  con¬ 
stitutes  a  large  part  of  the  art  of  mountaineering.  Even 
to  the  inexperienced  it  gradually  becomes  less  difficult 
than  it  looks,  and  I  was  not  obliged  to  depend  upon 
my  guides  to  such  a  humiliating  extent  as  to  forfeit 
their  respect.  Ropes,  that  at  especially  difficult  points 
were  attached  for  the  support  of  the  climber,  I  was 
advised  not  to  touch,  as  exposure  to  weather  makes 
them  unreliable. 

There  was  one  momentous  wall  of  rock  before  which 
I  stood  simply  flabbergasted.  It  was  at  what  is  known 
as  the  “Shoulder.”  It  is  about  three-quarters  of  the 
way  up  and  is  so  noticeable  a  feature  that  any  one  will 
detect  it  in  any  sizable  picture  or  photograph  of  the 
Matterhorn.  It  was  at  this  point  that  the  Whymper 
disaster  occurred.  As  I  stood  there  in  meditative  mood, 
questioning  whether  I  was  cut  out  for  a  mountaineer, 
I  could  look  down  at  my  right  and  see  the  slope  over 
which  the  bodies  of  Whymper’s  four  associates  rolled 
to  their  cold  death.  The  spot  is  fast  fixed  in  my  mem¬ 
ory:  frozen  there. 

This  point  of  difficulty  was  slowly  passed  and  by 
careful  progress  we  compassed  the  remaining  distance 
to  the  summit,  which  we  reached  about  noon, — the  final 
section  from  the  “Shoulder”  up  being  on  all  accounts 
the  most  trying  of  all. 

During  the  ascent  and  at  its  finish  there  were  three 
points  which  afforded  specially  memorable  views,  each 
of  which  more  than  compensated  me  for  all  my  expen¬ 
diture  of  effort. 


104  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


The  first  was  reached  after  evening  had  darkened 
into  night,  when,  seen  through  the  thin  and  clarified 
atmosphere,  the  earth  and  the  firmament  seemed  to 
close  in  upon  each  other  and  we  to  be  walking  through 
the  midst  of  the  stars.  It  was  moreover  the  season  of 
the  August  meteors  which  made  fantastic  sport  in  the 
heavens  and  drew  long  swift  lines  of  fiery  light  across 
the  sky.  It  was  another  moment  of  bewildering  mag¬ 
nificence  when,  in  the  early  morning  the  sky  began  to 
be  tinted  and  then  to  be  flushed  with  the  light  of  the 
rising  sun.  The  entire  valley  below  was  a  motionless 
sea  of  fog.  For  hundreds  and  hundreds  of  miles  on 
every  side  mountain-peaks  pricked  their  way  up  through 
the  fog,  and, — as  the  sun  gradually  cleared  the  hori¬ 
zon, — showed  themselves  as  rose-tinted  islands,  a  vast 
sun-lit  archipelago.  The  entire  scene  was  a  soul-en¬ 
trancing  commentary  on  the  solemn  transaction  of  the 
world's  birthday,  when  God  said,  “Let  there  be  light.” 

The  third  feature  of  special  interest  I  can  introduce 
by  saying  that  one  of  the  fascinations  of  high  moun¬ 
tain  work  is  the  gradually  expanding  view  attendant 
upon  every  added  upward  step  taken  by  the  climber. 
One  feels  the  world  to  be  gradually  growing  around 
him.  His  horizon  continues  retreating  further  and 
further  into  the  distance.  One’s  expectation  is  kept 
sharpened  by  the  curiosity  to  see  what  the  next  step 
will  bring  forth.  A  sense  of  weariness  is  extinguished 
by  the  steadily  broadening  panorama. 

The  final  stretch  of  four  or  five  hundred  feet  was, 
however,  so  sharp  as  to  confine  my  attention  to  the 
difficulties  of  the  path;  but  as  at  last  I  stepped  out  into 


ASCENT  OF  THE  MATTERHORN  105 


the  clear,  at  the  altitude  of  14,000  feet,  with  the  entire 
mass  of  the  Matterhorn  beneath  our  feet,  my  experi¬ 
ence  was  so  intense  and  bewildering  as  not  to  admit 
of  being  put  into  words. 

It  seemed  as  though  I  were  everywhere  all  at  once. 
It  seemed  as  though  the  whole  world,  or  a  large  part 
of  it  lay  spread  out  around  me.  Mountain  range  rose 
behind  mountain  range  like  so  many  concentric  waves 
in  the  boundless  ocean  of  distance.  The  map  of  South¬ 
eastern  Europe  was  unrolled  around  me  and  beneath 
me,  Switzerland,  France,  Germany,  Italy  down  to  the 
Mediterranean,  as  though,  like  the  Lord  himself,  we 
were  about  to  see  all  the  kingdoms  of  the  world  and 
the  glory  of  them.  There  are  experiences  known  only 
to  the  mountaineer,  and  pictures  cherished  in  his  mem¬ 
ory  that  reduce  to  insignificance  all  the  products  of 
human  art. 


CHAPTER  VII 


SUCCESSFUL  ASSAULT  UPON  THE  TAMMANY  INTEREST, 
CONDUCTED  UNDER  THE  AUSPICES  OF  THE 
SOCIETY  FOR  THE  PREVENTION  OF 

CRIME  IN  1892-1894 

I  am  devoting  considerable  space  to  this  matter  for 
three  reasons:  first,  because  I  was  myself  so  involved  in 
it  that  my  autobiography  would  be  incomplete  without 
it;  second,  because  there  has  been  expressed  to  me 
the  desire  that  the  public  should  have  given  to  it  a 
simplified  narrative  of  the  campaign;  third,  because 
there  were  lessons  taught  then  that  should  be  impressed 
upon  the  minds  of  those  who  were  children  at  that 
time  but  who  are  now  sprung  up  into  years  that  entail 
active  civic  obligations. 

Tammany’s  defeat  in  ’94  was  achieved  by  the  So¬ 
ciety  for  the  Prevention  of  Crime,  an  organization 
dating  from  October,  1878,  and  reckoning  among  its 
incorporators  such  men  as  Peter  Cooper,  Howard 
Crosby,  Frederick  A.  Booth  and  D.  B.  St.  John  Roosa: 
Howard  Crosby  being  its  first  president.  I  became 
connected  with  the  Society  in  November,  1890,  by 
invitation  of  Dr.  Crosby,  he  being  moved  thereto  by 
a  published  report  of  a  sermon  which  I  had  preached 
shortly  prior  to  the  November  election. 

Dr.  Crosby  died  soon  after,  and  I  was  elected  to  fill 

106 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  107 


his  place  April  30th,  1891.  The  Society  was  at  that 
time  limiting  itself  to  quiet  work  with  no  purpose  of 
achieving  radical  results.  I  accepted  the  presidency  on 
the  condition  that  we  cease  occupying  ourselves  with 
cutting  off  the  tops  and  apply  ourselves  to  plucking 
up  the  roots. 

As  a  country  boy  I  had  always  looked  upon  New 
York  as  a  kind  of  Jerusalem,  a  sort  of  holy  city,  a 
monumental  exhibit  of  the  finest  product  of  modern 
civilization.  Coming  here  in  ’80  I  had  no  immediate 
means  of  learning  anything  to  the  contrary,  for  my 
attention  was  confined  to  the  members  of  my  congre¬ 
gation,  who  only  confirmed  me  in  my  optimistic  esti¬ 
mate.  My  congregation  contained  a  large  element  of 
young  men  whose  brightness  and  alertness  arrested  my 
attention  and  aroused  my  deep  interest. 

As  a  result  of  closer  acquaintance  with  them,  and  in 
consequence  of  what  I  learned  from  trusted  members 
of  the  legal  and  medical  professions,  I  became  ac¬ 
quainted  with  facts  that  considerably  chilled  my  opti¬ 
mism,  and  led  me  to  believe  that  my  young  parishioners 
would  more  easily  grow  up  into  manliness  of  life  if 
they  were  less  exposed  to  certain  exacting  temptations. 

We  had  but  a  small  force  in  our  office,  but  such  as 
we  had  I  set  in  motion  along  the  lines  of  the  gambling 
and  the  social  evils,  only  to  learn  to  my  innocent  sur¬ 
prise  that  it  was  the  Police  that  constituted  the  out¬ 
works  of  the  fortification  that  I  was  undertaking  to 
besiege,  and  that  it  was  the  city  which  I  had  so  greatly 
admired  from  a  distance,  which,  in  one  of  its  most 
prominent  Departments,  stood  between  me  and  the 


108  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


young  men  whose  interests  it  was  my  duty  and  privi¬ 
lege  to  safeguard.  It  dawned  upon  me  that  crime  was 
the  policeman’s  stock  in  trade,  his  capital,  which  of 
course  it  was  to  his  interest  to  encourage  in  order  to 
the  enhancement  of  his  personal  revenues.  That  was 
the  situation  which  I  confronted  and  which  I  stated  to 
the  directors  of  my  Society — the  S.  P.  C. — with  the 
insistence  that  they  drop  all  minor  matters  and  deal 
directly  with  the  Police  Department,  making  no  alliance 
with  it  and  giving  it  no  quarter.  The  proposition  was 
accepted  with  prompt  and  unanimous  cordiality.  That 
established  a  policy.  The  working  out  of  details  was 
another  and  more  difficult  problem,  which  was  left  to 
the  Executive  Committee  consisting  of  Frank  Moss, 
Thaddeus  D.  Kenneson  and  myself.  To  my  colleagues 
I  yield  unstinted  praise  and  unbounded  honor.  Our 
motto  was,  ‘‘Down  with  the  Police.” 

What  has  been  already  related  led  up  to  what  might 
be  called  “the  first  gun  of  the  campaign,”  viz.,  the  ser¬ 
mon  which  I  preached  in  Madison  Square  Church 
Sabbath  morning,  February  14th,  1892,  from  the  text, 
“Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.”  No  notice  was  given 
of  its  delivery,  and  it  did  not  occur  to  the  preacher 
that  it  would  excite  particular  interest  or  create  any 
marked  impression.  Viewed  on  general  principles  it 
was  a  most  indiscreet  performance,  but  it  is  probable 
that  if  I  had  said  only  what  it  was  discreet  to  say, 
nothing  would  have  come  of  it  and  it  would  have 
proved  a  blank  cartridge.  I  am  going  to  make  ex¬ 
tended  extracts  from  that  sermon  for  otherwise  what 
occurred  later  would  be  inexplicable. 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  109 


FIRST  SERMON 

“  ‘Ye  are  the  salt  of  the  earth.’  This,  then,  is  a  cor¬ 
rupt  world,  and  Christianity  is  the  antiseptic  that  is  to 
be  rubbed  into  it  in  order  to  arrest  the  process  of 
decay:  an  illustration  taken  from  common  things,  but 
which  states  at  a  stroke  the  entire  story.  The  reason 
for  selecting  the  above  Scripture,  and  the  burden  that 
is  upon  my  mind  this  morning  is  this;  that  current 
Christianity  seems  not  in  any  notable  or  conspicuous 
way  to  be  fulfilling  the  destiny  which  the  Lord  here 
appoints  for  it.  It  lacks  distinct  purpose,  and  it  lacks 
virility.  We  are  living  in  a  wicked  world,  and  we  are 
fallen  upon  bad  times.  And  the  question  that  has  been 
pressing  upon  my  heart  these  days  and  weeks  past  has 
been,  What  can  I  do? 

“We  are  not  thinking  just  now  so  much  of  the 
world  at  large  as  we  are  of  the  particular  part  of  the 
world  that  it  is  our  doubtful  privilege  to  live  in.  We 
are  not  saying  that  the  times  are  any  worse  than  they 
have  been;  but  the  evil  that  is  in  them  is  giving  most 
uncommonly  distinct  tokens  of  its  presence  and  vitality, 
and  it  is  making  a  good  many  earnest  people  serious. 
They  are  asking,  What  is  to  be  done?  What  is  there 
that  I  can  do?  In  its  municipal  life  our  city  is  thor¬ 
oughly  rotten.  Here  is  an  immense  city  reaching  out 
arms  of  evangelization  to  every  quarter  of  the  globe; 
and  yet  every  step  that  we  take  looking  to  the  moral 
betterment  of  this  city  has  to  be  taken  directly  in  the 
teeth  of  the  damnable  pack  of  administrative  blood- 


110  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


hounds  that  are  fattening  themselves  on  the  ethical 
flesh  and  blood  of  our  citizenship. 

“We  have  a  right  to  demand  that  the  Mayor  and 
those  associated  with  him  in  administering  the  affairs 
of  this  municipality  should  not  put  obstructions  in  the 
path  of  our  ameliorating  endeavors;  and  they  do. 
There  is  not  a  form  under  which  the  devil  disguises 
himself  that  so  perplexes  us  in  our  efforts,  or  so  be¬ 
wilders  us  in  the  devising  of  our  schemes  as  the  polluted 
harpies  that,  under  the  pretence  of  governing  this  city, 
are  feeding  day  and  night  on  its  quivering  vitals.  They 
are  a  lying,  perjured,  rum-soaked,  and  libidinous  lot. 
If  we  try  to  close  up  a  house  of  prostitution  or  of 
assignation,  we,  in  the  guilelessness  of  our  innocent 
imaginations,  might  have  supposed  that  the  arm  of  the 
city  government  that  takes  official  cognizance  of  such 
matters,  would  like  nothing  so  well  as  to  watch  day¬ 
times  and  sit  up  nights  for  the  purpose  of  bringing  these 
dirty  malefactors  to  their  deserts.  On  the  contrary, 
the  arm  of  the  city  government  that  takes  official  cog¬ 
nizance  of  such  matters  evinces  but  a  languid  interest, 
shows  no  genius  in  ferreting  out  crime,  prosecutes  only 
when  it  has  to,  and  has  a  mind  so  keenly  judicial  that 
almost  no  amount  of  evidence  that  can  be  heaped  up 
is  accepted  as  sufficient  to  warrant  indictment. 

“We  do  not  say  that  the  proposition  to  raid  noted 
houses  of  assignation  touches  our  city  government  at 
a  sensitive  spot.  We  do  not  say  that  they  frequent 
them ;  nor  do  we  say  that  it  is  money  in  their  pockets 
to  have  them  maintained.  We  only  say  (we  think  a 
good  deal  more,  but  we  only  say)  that  so  far  as  relates 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  111 


to  the  blotting  out  of  such  houses  the  strength  of  the 
municipal  administration  is  practically  leagued  with 
them  rather  than  arrayed  against  them. 

“The  same  holds  true  of  other  institutions  of  an 
allied  character.  Gambling-houses  flourish  on  all  these 
streets  almost  as  thick  as  roses  in  Sharon.  They  are 
open  to  the  initiated  at  any  hour  of  day  or  night.  They 
are  eating  into  the  character  of  some  of  what  we  are 
accustomed  to  think  of  as  our  best  and  most  promising 
young  men.  They  are  a  sly  and  constant  menace  to 
all  that  is  choicest  and  most  vigorous  in  a  moral  way 
in  the  generation  that  is  now  moving  on  to  the  field 
of  action.  If  we  try  to  close  up  a  gambling-house,  we, 
in  the  guilelessness  of  our  imagination,  might  have 

supposed  that  the  arm  of  the  city  government  that 

* 

takes  cognizance  of  such  matters  would  find  no  ser¬ 
vice  so  congenial  as  that  of  combining  with  well-inten¬ 
tioned  citizens  in  turning  up  the  light  on  these  nefarious 
dens  and  giving  to  the  public  certified  lists  of  the  names 
of  their  frequenters.  But  if  you  convict  a  man  for 
keeping  a  gambling-hell  in  this  town,  you  have  to  do 
it  in  spite  of  the  authorities  and  not  by  their  aid. 

“It  may  be  said  that  this  method  of  stating  the  case 
is  injudicious;  that  it  is  unwise  too  sharply  to  antago¬ 
nize  the  powers  that  be;  that  convictions  will  not  be 
obtainable  if  we  make  enemies  of  the  men  who  exer¬ 
cise  police  and  judicial  functions.  On  the  contrary, 
there  are  only  two  kinds  of  argument  that  exercise  the 
slightest  logical  urgency  on  the  mind  of  that  stripe  of 
bandit, — one  is  money  and  the  other  is  fear.  We  shall 
gain  nothing  by  disguising  the  facts.  To  call  things 


112  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


by  their  right  names  is  always  a  direct  contribution  to 
wholesome  effects.  A  steamer  can  only  make  half¬ 
time  in  a  fog.  The  first  necessity  of  battle  is  to  have 
the  combatants  clearly  and  easily  distinguishable  by 
the  diversity  of  their  uniform.  We  want  to  know 
what  is  what. 

“Every  solid  statement  of  fact  is  argument.  Every 
time  you  deal  with  things  as  they  are,  and  name  them 
in  honest  ringing  Saxon,  you  have  done  something. 

It  has  always  been  a  trump-card  in  the  devil’s  game  to 
keep  things  mixed.  He  mixed  them  in  Paradise,  and 
he  has  been  trying  to  keep  them  mixed  ever  since.  If 
the  powers  that  are  managing  this  town  are  supremely 
and  concertedly  bent  on  encouraging  iniquity  in  order 
to  the  strengthening  of  their  own  position,  and  the 
enlargement  of  their  own  capital,  what  in  Heaven’s 
name  is  the  use  of  disguising  the  fact  and  wrapping  it 
up  in  ambiguous  euphemisms? 

“But  after  all  that  has  been  said  the  great  fact  re¬ 
mains  untouched  and  uninvalidated,  that  every  effort 
that  is  made  to  improve  character  in  this  city,  every 
effort  to  make  men  respectable,  honest,  temperate  and 
sexually  clean  is  a  direct  blow  between  the  eyes  of  the 
Mayor  and  his  whole  gang  of  drunken  and  lecherous 
subordinates,  in  this  sense  that  while  we  fight  iniquity 
they  shield  and  patronize  it;  while  we  try  to  convert 
criminals  they  manufacture  them;  and  they  have  a 
hundred  dollars  invested  in  manufacturing  machinery 
to  our  one  invested  in  converting  machinery. 

“We  speak  of  these  things  because  it  is  our  business 

as  the  pastor  of  a  Christian  church  to  speak  of  them. 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  113 


We  are  not  slow  to  insist  upon  keenness  of  spiritual 
discernment,  or  upon  the  reticent  vigor  of  a  life  hid 
with  Christ  in  God.  Piety  is  the  genius  of  the  entire 
matter;  but  piety,  when  it  fronts  sin,  has  got  to  become 
grit.  Salt  is  a  concrete  commodity,  and  requires  to 
be  rubbed  into  the  very  pores  of  decay.  I  scarcely 
ever  move  into  the  midst  of  the  busier  parts  of  this 
town  without  feeling  in  a  pained  way  how  little  of 
actual  touch  there  is  between  the  life  of  the  church  and 
the  life  of  the  times. 

“We  have  no  criticism  to  pass  on  the  effort  to  im¬ 
prove  the  quality  of  the  civilization  in  Central  Africa, 
but  it  would  count  more  in  the  moral  life  of  the  world 
to  have  this  city,  where  the  heart  of  the  country  beats, 
dominated  in  its  life  and  government  by  the  ethical 
principles  insisted  on  by  the  Gospel,  than  to  have  a 
belt  of  evangelical  light  a  hundred  miles  broad  thrown 
clear  across  the  Dark  Continent.  And  the  men  and 
women  that  live  here  are  the  ones  to  do  it.  It  is 
achievable.  What  Christianity  has  done  Christianity 
can  do.  And  when  it  is  done  it  is  going  to  be  done  by 
the  men  and  women  who  stand  up  and  make  a  business 
of  the  thing,  and  quit  playing  with  it:  quit  imagining 
that  somehow  we  are  going,  by  some  indescribable 
means,  to  drift  into  a  better  state  of  thing. 

“Say  all  you  please  about  the  might  of  the  Holy 
Ghost,  every  step  in  the  history  of  an  ameliorated  civili¬ 
zation  has  cost  just  so  much  personal  push.  You  and 
I  have  something  to  do  about  it.  If  we  have  a  brain, 
or  a  heart  or  a  purse,  and  sit  still  and  let  things  take 
their  course,  making  no  sign,  uttering  no  protest,  fling- 


114  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


ing  ourselves  into  no  endeavor,  the  times  will  eventually 
sit  in  judgment  upon  us,  and  they  will  damn  us.  Chris¬ 
tianity  is  here  for  an  object.  The  salt  is  here  for  a 
purpose.  If  your  Christianity  is  not  vigorous  enough 
to  help  save  this  country  and  this  city,  it  is  not  vigorous 
enough  to  do  anything  toward  saving  you.  Reality 
is  not  worn  out.  The  truth  is  not  knock-kneed.  The 
incisive  edge  of  bare-bladed  righteousness  will  still  cut. 
Only  it  has  got  to  be  righteousness  that  is  not  afraid 
to  stand  up,  move  in  the  midst  of  iniquity  and  shake 
itself.  The  humanly  incarnated  principles  of  this  Gos¬ 
pel  were  able  in  three  centuries  to  change  the  moral 
complexion  of  the  whole  Roman  Empire ;  and  there 
is  nothing  the  matter  with  the  Christianity  here  except 
that  the  incarnations  of  it  are  lazy  and  cowardly,  and 
think  more  of  their  personal  comfort  than  they  do  of 
municipal  decency,  and  more  of  their  dollars  than  they 
do  of  a  city  that  is  governed  by  men  who  are  tricky 
and  beastly. 

“But  you  ask  me  perhaps,  what  is  the  use  of  all 
this  asseveration  and  vituperation;  what  is  the  good 
of  protesting?  Do  you  know  what  the  word  Protestant 
means?  Do  you  know  that  a  Protestant  is  nothing 
but  a  protestant?  A  man  who  protests?  And  did  not 
the  men  who  protested  in  the  Sixteenth  Century  do  a 
good  deal?  Didn’t  they  start  a  volcano  beneath  the 
crust  of  the  whole  of  European  civilization?  Wherever 
you  have  a  Luther,  a  grand  stick  of  human  timber,  all 
afire  with  holy  indignation,  a  man  of  God,  who  is 
not  too  lymphatic  to  get  off  his  knees,  or  too  cowardly 
to  come  out  of  his  closet,  confront  iniquity,  look  it 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  115 


in  the  eye,  plaster  it  with  its  baptismal  name,  such  a 
man  can  start  a  reformation  and  a  revolution  every 
day  in  the  year  if  there  are  enough  of  them  to  go 
around.  Why,  it  makes  no  difference  how  thick  the 
darkness  is,  a  ray  of  light  will  cut  it  if  it  is  healthy  and 
spry. 

“Do  you  know  that  the  newspapers  had  not  been 
solidlv  at  work  for  more  than  about  four  weeks  be- 

m/ 

fore  the  dives  began  to  close  up?  Why,  the  truth 
will  frighten  even  a  policeman,  if  you  will  lodge  it 
where  David  did  when  he  fired  at  Goliath.  Truth,  with 
explosive  enough  behind  it,  would  scare  even  the  cap¬ 
tain  of  a  precinct,  and  chase  the  blushes  from  the 
callow  face  of  a  District  Attorney. 

“You  see  that  these  things  do  not  go  by  arithmetic, 
nor  by  a  show  of  hands.  A  man  who  is  held  in  the 
grip  of  the  everlasting  truth  and  is  not  afraid  is  a 
young  army  in  himself.  That  is  exactly  what  the  Bible 
means  when  it  says  that  one  man  shall  chase  a  thou¬ 
sand.  That  is  the  way  history  has  always  gone.  That 
is  what  the  Bible  story  of  Sodom  means  and  the  assur¬ 
ance  that  ten  men  would  have  sufficed  to  save  it.  Not 
ten  that  were  scared,  but  ten  that  so  had  the  courage 
of  their  convictions,  and  that  so  appreciated  the  priest- 
liness  of  the  office  to  which  they  had  been  called  that 
the  multitudinousness  of  the  dirty  crowd  they  stood 
up  among  neither  dashed  their  confidence  nor  quenched 
their  testimony. 

“This  is  not  bringing  politics  into  the  pulpit,  poli¬ 
tics  as  such.  The  particular  political  stripe  of  a  munici¬ 
pal  administration  is  no  matter  of  our  interest,  and 


116  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


none  of  our  business ;  but  to  strike  at  iniquity  is  a  part 
of  the  business  of  the  church,  indeed,  it  is  the  business 
of  the  church.  It  is  primarily  what  the  church  is  for, 
no  matter  in  what  connection  sin  may  find  itself 
associated  and  intermixed.  If  it  fall  properly  within 
the  jurisdiction  of  this  church  to  try  to  convert  Third 
Avenue  drunkards  from  their  alcoholism,  then  cer¬ 
tainly  it  is  germane  to  the  functions  of  this  church  to 
strike  the  sturdiest  blows  it  is  capable  of  at  a  municipal 
administration  whose  supreme  mission  it  is  to  protect, 
foster,  and  propagate  alcoholism.  If  it  is  proper  for 
us  to  go  around  cleaning  up  after  the  devil,  it  is  proper 
for  us  to  fight  the  devil.  If  it  is  right  to  cure,  it  is 
right  to  prevent,  and  a  thousand  times  more  economical 
and  sagacious.  If  we  are  not,  as  a  church,  transcend¬ 
ing  our  jurisdiction  by  attempting  to  convert  Third 
Avenue  prostitutes  from  their  harlotry,  then  surely  we 
are  within  the  pale  of  our  authority  as  a  church  when 
we  antagonize  and  bear  prophetic  testimony  against  an 
administration  the  one  necessary  outcome  of  whose 
policy  it  is  to  breed  prostitutes. 

“The  only  object  of  my  appeal  this  morning  has 
been  to  sound  a  distinct  note,  and  to  quicken  our  Chris¬ 
tian  sense  of  the  obligatory  relation  in  which  we  stand 
toward  the  official  and  administrative  criminality  that 
is  filthifying  our  entire  municipal  life,  making  New 
York  a  very  hotbed  of  knavery,  debauchery  and  bes¬ 
tiality,  in  the  atmosphere  of  which,  and  at  the  corro¬ 
sive  touch  of  which,  there  is  not  a  young  man  so  noble, 
nor  a  young  girl  so  pure,  as  not  to  be  in  a  degree  in¬ 
fected  by  the  fetid  contamination.  There  is  no  malice 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  117 


in  this,  any  more  than  there  would  be  if  we  were  talk¬ 
ing  about  cannibalism  in  the  South  Sea  Islands;  only 
that  having  to  live  in  the  midst  of  it,  and  having  to 
pay  taxes  to  help  support  it,  and  having  nine-tenths  of 
our  Christian  effort  neutralized  and  paralyzed  by  the 
damnable  pressure  of  it,  naturally  our  thoughts  are 
strained  to  a  little  snugger  tension. 

“I  have  meant  to  be  unprejudiced  in  my  position, 
and  conservative  in  my  demands,  but,  Christian  friends, 
we  have  got  to  have  a  better  world,  and  we  have  got 
to  have  a  better  city  than  this  is;  and  men  who  feel 
iniquity  keenly  and  who  are  not  afraid  to  stand  up 
and  hammer  it  unflinchingly  and  remorselessly,  and 
never  get  tired  of  hammering  it,  are  the  instruments 
God  has  always  used  to  the  defeat  of  Satan  and  to 
the  bringing  in  of  a  better  day:  with  a  confidence  so 
intense  that  we  shall  not  be  afraid;  loving  righteous¬ 
ness  with  a  loyalty  so  impassioned  that  we  shall  feel 
the  might  of  it  and  trust  it,  and  our  lives  become  this 
day  enlisted  in  the  maintenance  of  the  right,  and  thus 
show  that  Almighty  God  is  mightier  than  all  the  ranks 
of  Satan  that  challenge  His  claims  and  dispute  His 
blessed  progress.” 

i 

From  innumerable  newspaper  comments  passed  upon 
the  sermon,  I  introduce  only  two,  as  follows:  “We 
hope  that  every  good  citizen  of  New  York  will  read 
the  admirable  report  of  the  Rev.  Dr.  Charles  H.  Park- 
hurst’s  rousing  sermon  yesterday  morning  at  the  Madi¬ 
son  Square  Presbyterian  Church.  It  was  the  severest 
indictment  of  this  Tammany-debauched  municipal  gov- 


118  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


ernment  that  has  been  made.  It  is  a  good  sign  when 
the  ministers  of  this  city  find  time  and  tongue  to  de¬ 
nounce  our  monstrous  misgovernment.” 

“The  Rev.  Dr.  Parkhurst  ‘took  on  dreadful’  last 
Sunday.  With  well  feigned  virtuous  indignation  he 
rhetorically  assaulted  the  whole  municipal  outfit,  plainly 
stating  that  the  officials,  from  Mayor  Grant  down  to 
the  last  Dago  appointment  in  Tom  Brennan’s  street¬ 
cleaning  force,  were  the  silent  partners  of  all  the  enter¬ 
prising  criminals  in  town.  Dr.  Parkhurst  would  be 
entitled  to  all  the  way  from  five  to  five  hundred  years’ 
penal  servitude  for  such  an  assertion,  if  it  were  to  be 
levelled  at  specific  individuals.” 

The  charges  that  I  made  from  my  pulpit  on  the  14th 
of  February  were  founded  exclusively  on  rumor.  It 
was  on  that  account  that  I  was  grilled  by  the  officials  of 
the  city,  all  of  whom  realized  the  truth  of  my  charges, 
and  knew  that  if  I  had  gone  considerably  further  the 
truth  would  still  have  been  on  my  side;  that  fact, 
however,  did  not  relieve  the  Society  for  the  Prevention 
of  Crime  from  the  perplexed  situation  in  which  my 
unsubstantiated  accusations  had  placed  it. 

On  the  morning  following  the  delivery  of  the  dis¬ 
course  I  visited  the  District  Attorney  at  his  office 
accompanied  by  my  counsel  Mr.  Frank  Moss,  and 
presented  to  him  for  his  action  half  a  dozen  excise 
cases  which  had  been  worked  up  with  a  good  deal  of 
care,  and  which  had  to  do  with  offenders  of  a  stripe 
that  the  Attorney  might  not  care  to  inconvenience.  I 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  119 


told  him  that  the  report  had  of  late  frequently  emanated 
from  his  office  that  he  found  it  difficult  to  obtain  evi¬ 
dence  sufficient  to  convict  violators  of  excise  and  that 
the  Society  for  the  Prevention  of  Crime  would  be  only 
too  glad  to  render  him  assistance.  In  reply  the  Attor¬ 
ney  said:  “Dr.  Parkhurst,  I  refuse  to  have  any  official 
communication  with  you  till  you  have  withdrawn  the 
falsehoods  that  you  have  spoken  against  me  from  your 
pulpit.”  “That  being  the  case,”  said  I,  “I  will  ask 
our  counsel,  Mr.  Moss,  to  confer  with  you  in  my 
stead.” 

Now  just  at  that  point  was  the  District  Attorney’s 
opportunity.  His  passion  got  the  better  of  his  dis¬ 
cretion.  If  he  hadn’t  lost  his  self-control  he  would 
have  replied  to  me  in  something  this  way, — “Notwith¬ 
standing  the  fact  that  you  have  lied  about  me  yesterday 
and  referred  to  me  in  a  way  that  was  calculated  to 
make  me  ridiculous,  I  am  nevertheless  just  as  anxious 
as  you  are  to  have  any  existing  evils  corrected,  and 
will  cordially  appreciate  any  assistance  which  you  or 
your  society  may  render.”  Now  if  he  had  said  that, 
every  breath  of  wind  would  have  gone  out  of  my 
sails.  Tammany’s  defeat  in  ’94  hinged  on  that  mo¬ 
ment.  The  demand  was  openly  made  that  I  must  either 
substantiate  my  charges  or  be  sued  for  libel.  In  pros¬ 
pect  of  a  libel  suit,  as  competent  legal  talent  as  the 
city  could  offer  was  immediately  put  at  my  gratuitous 
service. 

It  followed  almost  as  matter  of  course  that  a  subpoena 
was  issued  for  my  attendance  before  the  grand  jury. 
I  found  the  atmosphere  of  the  jury-room  distinctly 


120  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


uncongenial.  What  occurred  there  was  more  to  the 
satisfaction  of  the  District  Attorney  and  the  Jurors 
than  to  myself.  I  was  in  a  hole  deeper  than  that  into 
which  Joseph  was  thrown  and  without  even  a  Midian- 
ite  to  extricate  me.  I  could  not  swear  that  the  At¬ 
torney  lived  an  irregular  life,  that  police  officers  were 
blackmailers,  that  the  Tammany  bench  was  tainted  or 
that  the  entire  Fourteenth  Street  organization  was  not 
a  disguised  branch  of  the  Prohibition  party.  The  exer¬ 
cises  closed  with  a  foreman’s  polite  indication  that 
further  attendance  on  my  part  would  not  be  required. 

I  retired,  cheerful  but  worsted. 

A  few  days  later  the  grand  jury  issued  a  present¬ 
ment.  My  name  was  not  stated  in  the  document,  but 
it  bore  on  its  face  the  indication  that  it  was  against  me 
personally  that  the  presentment  was  framed.  Two 
paragraphs  of  the  jury’s  finding  were  the  following: 
“We  find  the  author  of  the  charges  had  no  evidence 
upon  which  to  base  them,  except  alleged  newspaper 
reports,  which  in  the  form  published  had  no  founda¬ 
tion  in  fact.  We  desire  further  to  express  our  dis¬ 
approval  and  condemnation  of  unfounded  charges  of 
this  character,  which,  whatever  may  be  the  motive  in 
uttering  them,  can  only  serve  to  create  a  feeling  of 
unwarranted  distrust  in  the  minds  of  the  community 
with  regard  to  the  integrity  of  public  officials,  and 
tends  only  to  hinder  the  prompt  administration  of 
justice.” 

After  the  grand  jury’s  presentment  Judge  Martine, 
who  had  the  jury  in  charge,  addressed  it  at  some  length. 

After  congratulating  it  upon  the  thoroughness  of  its 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  121 


investigation  of  my  attack,  he  said  in  part:  “It  is 
gratifying  indeed  to  find  that  your  body  has  seen  fit 
to  make  some  investigation  of  the  attack,  such  as  was 
made  in  the  public  press  by  a  certain  gentleman  in 
this  community.  After  the  first  inquiry, — after  the 
first  suggestion  of  official  inquiry, — the  people  came 
to  comprehend  that  there  was  no  foundation  for  the 
accusation,  and  it  is  indeed  gratifying  to  find  that  after 
your  investigation  there  was  nothing  but  rumor,  nothing 
but  hearsay  to  base  any  accusation  upon.” 

The  foregoing  from  the  grand  jury  and  the  bench 
was  designed  as  a  quietus  and  was  understood  to  be 
such  by  city  officials,  by  Tammany  and  by  the  public 
journals  published  in  Tammany’s  interests. 

At  this  juncture  the  situation  was  such  that  only 
two  alternative  courses  were  open  to  me:  one  was  to 
drop  the  matter  and  acknowledge  myself  defeated;  the 
other  was  to  make  myself  able  to  say  “I  know.”  The 
latter  would  involve  making  a  city-wide  tour  of  per¬ 
sonal  inspection,  a  policy  that  would  expose  me  to  the 
gibes  of  the  enemy  and  to  the  criticism  of  some  of 
my  friends.  In  arriving  at  a  decision  I  consulted  only 
the  other  two  members  of  the  executive  committee  of 
the  S.  P.  C.  and  Mr.  David  J.  Whitney,  who  was  a 
fighter  from  away  back  and  well  versed  in  the  wiles 
of  our  adversary.  He  appreciated  the  advantage  that 
would  accrue  to  me  from  being  able  to  speak  from 
personal  knowledge  but  warned  me  in  emphatic  terms 
of  the  barbed  arrows  that  would  be  shot  at  me  if  I 
adopted  a  policy  so  contradictory  to  the  average  senti¬ 
ment  of  polite  society. 

The  idea  was  put  forth  that  instead  of  doing  the 


122  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


work  myself  the  same  results  could  be  secured  by  the 
employment  of  paid  detectives.  Such  a  notion  could 
be  entertained  only  by  people  ignorant  of  the  hesitant 
respect  that  is  shown  to  the  testimony  of  hired  detec¬ 
tives.  It  has  also  been  claimed  that  as  a  tour  of 
personal  investigation  involved  contact  with  what  is 
disgusting  I  ought  to  have  hired  some  one  to  do  it  for 
me.  When  the  Editor  of  the  Times  of  that  date  printed 
that  idea  I  went  to  his  office  and  asked  him  if  he  had 
so  little  respect  for  me  as  to  suppose  that  I  would  pay 
some  one  else  for  doing  what  was  so  repulsive  that  I 
was  unwilling  to  do  it  myself.  He  was  frank  enough 
to  acknowledge  that  that  view  of  the  case  had  some¬ 
thing  to  commend  it. 

I  was  obliged  to  use  as  guide  a  man  who  was  fa¬ 
miliar  with  the  underworld.  I  also  availed  of  the 
attendance  of  a  member  of  my  congregation  who 
volunteered  his  services.  I  do  not  know  whether  he 
suspected  all  that  was  in  my  mind  or  how  necessary 
to  the  success  of  my  enterprise  was  the  presence  with 
me  of  a  man  whose  known  character  and  position  in 
society  would,  under  all  circumstances,  entitle  his  word 
and  testimony  to  confidence.  If  in  connection  with 
this  entire  warfare  there  have  been  spoken  words  of 
invective  and  insinuation  too  dastardly  to  be  forgiven 
either  in  this  world  or  elsewhere,  they  were  words  that 
were  spoken  of  my  noble  companion,  Langdon  Erving. 
Langdon  had  been  for  twenty  years  associated  in  busi¬ 
ness  with  the  late  James  A.  Scrymser  of  the  Mexican 
Telegraph  Co.,  who  in  a  volume  of  his  own  authorship, 
says  of  Langdon, — “He  consulted  with  me  very  fully 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  123 


before  offering  his  services  to  Dr.  Parkhurst.  Of 
course  we  both  foresaw  something  of  the  tremendous 
sacrifice  and  the  abhorrent  notoriety  which  would  re¬ 
sult,  but  on  the  other  hand,  we  realized  the  vital  neces¬ 
sity  for  a  man  of  the  type  of  Mr.  Erving,  if  Dr. 
Parkhurst  were  to  accomplish  the  upheaval  at  which 
he  aimed.  The  testimony  of  a  man  of  unimpeachable 
integrity  and  character  was  invaluable;  a  lifelong  New 
Yorker,  a  New  Yorker  for  generations  back,  a  man 
of  refinement  and  a  gentleman,  such  a  man  was  Mr. 
Erving  and  his  testimony  was  bound  to  succeed  in  the 
end,  where  the  testimony  of  some  paid  detective  would 
have  had  little,  if  any,  effect  upon  the  court  and  jury.” 

Some  conception  of  the  “tremendous  sacrifice”  to 
which  Mr.  Scrymser  makes  reference,  can  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  in  one  of  the  court  trials  in  which, 
later  on,  Langdon  was  a  witness,  the  counsel  for  the 
defense,  out  of  malignant  desire  to  put  him  to  the 
torture,  subjected  him  to  such  a  mortifying  grilling 
that  he  fainted  away  on  the  witness  stand. 

I  certainly  have  no  purpose  of  reproducing  here  the 
details  of  those  three  weeks,  which,  in  the  company 
of  Erving,  and  under  the  guidance  of  my  detective,  I 
spent  in  traversing  the  avenues  of  our  municipal  hell. 
The  details  have  been  given  to  the  public  through  the 
press  and  by  no  journal  more  prolifically  or  with  more 
zest  than  by  the  one  that  has  affected  the  deepest  an¬ 
guish  at  the  vast  number  of  pure  minds  that  have  been 
sullied  by  the  repulsive  disclosures.  I  can  only  say 
that  having  once  determined  upon  a  policy  of  personal 
inspection  I  consistently  determined  to  acquaint  myself 


124  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


with  the  worst  thing  that  was  to  be  known  and  seen. 
If  it  was  to  be  done  it  was  to  be  done  thoroughly,  or, 
to  use  the  phrase  employed  by  Judge  Noah  Davis  a 
few  weeks  later,  “If  I  was  going  to  enter  hell  I  would 
seek  out  its  most  hellish  spot.” 

The  attempt  was  made,  especially  by  Dana’s  paper, 
to  prejudice  me  in  the  public  mind  by  charging  me 
with  persecuting  the  unfortunate  inmates  of  houses 
of  evil  resort,  and  the  police  chimed  in  with  Dana  to 
the  same  purpose.  Whether  in  spoken  address  or  in 
published  communications  I  made  continuous  endeavor 
to  make  it  understood  by  the  public  that  I  was  not 
fighting  the  social  evil,  and  that  my  exclusive  warfare 
was  against  the  commercial  relations  which  existed 
between  the  police  and  the  keepers  of  those  resorts, 
whereby  the  keepers  by  paying  to  the  police  a  certain 
sum  when  they  opened  a  house  and  so  much  per 
month  after  it  was  opened,  could  enjoy  immunity  from 
arrest. 

The  following  incident  will  set  the  situation  in  clear 
light.  One  cold  winter’s  night,  with  the  ground  deeply 
covered  with  snow,  the  police  raided  a  lot  of  houses 
on  31st  Street,  and  the  girls,  lightly  clad,  were  thrown 
out  into  the  snow,  the  police  explaining  their  action  to 
the  girls  by  saying  that  they  were  proceeding  accord¬ 
ing  to  orders  received  from  “Old  Parkhurst.”  Nothing 
could  have  more  effectively  embittered  them  toward 
me  or  have  produced  a  more  unfavorable  impression 
upon  the  public.  About  forty  of  them  trooped  down 
to  my  house  on  35th  Street,  all  of  them  howling  mad. 
They  made  a  unanimous  and  clamorous  charge  of 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  125 


cruelty,  which  Mrs.  Parkhurst  and  myself  listened  to 
quietly  till  they  had  become  exhausted  and  then  having 
invited  them  to  seat  themselves,  I  expressed  my  sym¬ 
pathetic  regret  at  the  exposure  to  which  they  had  been 
subjected;  that  I  had  known  nothing  about  the  affair 
till  that  moment;  that  Mrs.  Parkhurst  would  presently 
supply  them  with  something  that  would  feed  them  if 
they  were  hungry  and  warm  them  if  they  were  cold, 
and  that  then  we  would  have  a  frank  and  kindly  talk 
with  them  about  the  situation.  I  need  not  rehearse 
what  passed  between  us  in  the  way  of  question  and 
answer,  after  they  had  satisfied  themselves  with  tea 
and  toast.  It  is  enough  to  say  that  they  went  away 
from  35th  Street  loving  Mrs.  Parkhurst  and  myself 
as  sincerely  as  they  hated  the  police  and  the  city  gov¬ 
ernment. 

In  contrast  with  the  Sun ,  the  New  York  World  was 
a  very  helpful  auxiliary.  Its  editor  asked  me  to  his 
office  and  said:  “I  am  now  beginning  to  understand 
what  it  is  exactly  you  are  aiming  to  accomplish;  that 
it  is  not  the  social  evil  that  you  are  combating,  but  the 
collusion  between  the  police  (along  with  the  powers 
higher  up)  and  the  criminal  classes  (gamblers  and 
keepers  of  houses  of  prostitution).  I  will  send  a  re¬ 
porter  to  your  house  and  he  can  fill  an  entire  page  of 
the  World  with  details  of  your  work  and  exposition 
of  your  object  and  aim.”  The  reporter’s  work  was 
appreciatively  done  and  was  of  great  service. 


126  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


SECOND  SERMON 

Intimation  had  been  given  that  on  the  morning  of 
March  13th  the  discourse  preached  in  Madison  Square 
Church  would  be  devoted  to  a  reply  to  the  Grand  Jury’s 
Presentment  and  to  Judge  Martine’s  congratulations  to 
the  jury  upon  its  faithful  and  successful  investigation 
of  my  charges.  On  that  occasion  the  place  on  the 
pulpit  usually  occupied  by  Bible  and  hymn-book  was 
filled  by  a  bulky  package  of  affidavits.  Preaching 
from  the  text,  “The  wicked  walk  on  every  side  when 
the  vilest  men  are  exalted,”  I  spoke  in  part  as  fol¬ 
lows: — 

“It  will  be  well  for  us  to  come  to  a  frank  under¬ 
standing  with  one  another  at  the  commencement  of  our 
discussion,  as  to  the  scope  of  our  campaign.  What 
was  spoken  from  this  pulpit  four  weeks  ago  was 
spoken  with  a  distinct  intent,  from  which  we  have  not 
in  the  meantime  swerved,  whatever  the  obstruction 
and  intimidation,  official  or  otherwise,  that  has  been 
launched  against  us,  for  the  exclusive  aim  of  the  move¬ 
ment  is  to  lay  bare  the  iniquity  that  municipally  neu¬ 
tralizes  the  efforts  which  a  Christian  pulpit  puts  forth 
to  make  righteousness  the  law  of  human  life  individ¬ 
ually  and  socially.  So  that  I  apprehend  that  my  func¬ 
tion  as  a  preacher  of  righteousness  gives  me  no  option 
in  the  matter. 

“It  is  important  to  recognize  the  purely  moral  inten¬ 
tion  of  the  crusade  as  security  against  its  becoming 
complicated  with  considerations  that  stand  aloof  from 
the  main  point.  A  great  many  civic  efforts  have  been 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  127 


made  here  that  have  resulted  in  nothing,  for  the  suffi¬ 
cient  reason  that  they  have  been  side-tracked  and  mort¬ 
gaged  to  some  competitive  interest.  Let  me  say  then 
that  I  do  not  speak  as  a  Republican  or  a  Democrat, 
as  a  Protestant  or  a  Catholic,  as  an  advocate  of  prohi¬ 
bition  or  as  an  advocate  of  license.  I  am  moved  by 
the  respect  which  I  have  for  the  Ten  Commandments, 
and  by  my  anxiety  as  a  preacher  of  Jesus  Christ,  to 
have  the  law  of  God  regnant  in  individual  and  social 
life;  so  that  I  antagonize  our  existing  municipal  admin¬ 
istration  because  I  believe  that  administration  to  be 
essentially  corrupt  and  to  stand  in  diametric  resistance 
to  all  that  Christ  and  a  loyally  Christian  pulpit  repre¬ 
sent  in  the  world. 

“Tammany  Hall  is  not  a  political  party  but  purely  a 
business  enterprise,  as  much  so  as  Standard  Oil  or  the 
Western  Union  Telegraph,  and  superior  to  any  other 
company  of  which  I  have  knowledge,  in  respect  to  the 
perfection  of  its  organization.  The  material  in  which 
it  deals  and  from  which  it  draws  prolific  dividends,  is 
crime  and  vice,  such  as  flourish  in  gambling  resorts, 
disorderly  houses  and  corner  groceries.  The  more 
material  it  can  handle  the  larger  its  profits  and  there¬ 
fore  the  policy  which  it  steadfastly  pursues  is  to  foster 
crime  and  exercise  guardianship  over  the  criminals. 

“And  not  only  does  the  organization  stand  as  the 
organization  of  crime  but  it  embodies  the  tyranny  of 
crime.  There  are  citizens  in  this  town  abominating 
the  whole  existing  system  that  do  not  dare  to  stand  up 
and  be  counted.  The  most  striking  feature  of  the  im¬ 
mense  number  of  letters  of  encouragement  that  I  have 


128  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


received  during  the  last  four  weeks  is  the  large  percen¬ 
tage  written  by  people  who  did  not  dare  to  append  their 
signatures,  afraid  to  put  into  black  and  white  over  their 
own  names,  views  of  a  government  whose  duty  it  is 
to  foster  virtue,  not  drive  it  into  hiding.  Let  me  say 
that  it  is  an  excellent  time  to  speak  out,  an  admirable 
opportunity  for  moral  heroism  to  come  to  the  front 
and  assert  itself.  Nothing  is  so  easily  frightened  as 
vice.  ‘The  wicked  flee  when  no  man  pursueth,’  and 
they  make  still  better  time  when  somebody  is  after 
them. 

“Men  of  tainted  reputation  cannot  occupy  positions 
of  high  municipal  authority  without  that  fact  operat¬ 
ing  to  the  discouragement  of  virtue  and  the  lowering 
of  moral  standards.  It  is  a  trying  condition  of  affairs 
for  such  as  are  attempting  to  improve  the  moral  state 
of  our  young  men,  to  have  men  exalted  to  positions  of 
distinguished  authority  against  whom  the  most  damn¬ 
ing  charge  that  can  be  made  is  to  publish  their  history. 
A  while  ago  the  treasurer  of  a  bank  downtown,  who 
was  not  even  suspected  of  being  dishonest,  but  whose 
name,  through  no  fault  of  his  own,  had  become  asso¬ 
ciated  with  a  disreputable  firm,  was  thrown  out  of  his 
position.  The  reason  stated  by  the  directors  was  that, 
though  unanimously  recognizing  the  integrity  of  the 
treasurer,  they  could  not  afford  to  jeopardize  the  inter¬ 
ests  of  the  bank  by  having  associated  with  them  a  man 
that  was  tainted  even  to  the  slightest  degree  of  being 
mentioned  in  connection  with  dishonest  dealing. 

“Now,  that  is  the  way  you  run  a  bank.  That  is  the 
style  of  condition  that  you  impose  upon  candidates  for 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  129 


positions  of  financial  trust.  But  when  you  come  to  run 
a  city,  with  a  million  and  a  half  of  people,  with  interests 
that  are  a  great  deal  more  than  pecuniary,  and  a  city, 
too,  that  is  putting  the  stamp  of  its  character  or  of  its 
infamy  upon  every  city  the  country  through,  then  you 
can  see  put  into  positions  of  civic  trust,  men  that  are 
ex-dive-keepers  and  crooks  and  ex-convicts  and  men 
whose  detailed  written  history  would  draw  tremblingly 
near  to  the  verge  of  obscene  literature. 

“Last  Sunday  while  we  were  quietly  discussing  City 
Missions  here  in  the  church,  I  had  a  force  of  five  de¬ 
tectives  scattered  through  the  town  studying  up  City 
Missions.  I  have  here  on  the  pulpit  the  results  of  their 
day’s  work,  neatly  typewritten,  sworn  to,  corroborated 
and  subject  to  the  call  of  the  District  Attorney.  I 
have  first  the  list  of  parties  that  last  Sunday  violated 
the  ordinance  of  Sunday  closing.  One  of  these  covers 
the  East  Side,  and  the  other  the  West  Side  of  town. 
These  names  are  interesting,  some  of  them  particu¬ 
larly  so;  in  some  instances  on  account  of  their  official 
position,  in  other  instances  because  of  their  family  con¬ 
nection  with  the  powers  that  be. 

“These  lists  include  violations  in  22  precincts.  I  have 
also  here  the  list  of  places,  with  addresses  and  the 
number  of  people  present  in  each.  Then  comes  John 
Jones’  sworn  corroboration  of  John  Smith’s  affidavit. 
In  other  words  ‘Legal  Evidence,’  which  is  what  I  un¬ 
derstand  our  municipal  administration  is  anxious  to 
have  this  pulpit  furnish  to  it.  Of  course  I  am  not  going 
to  take  up  your  time  by  reading  the  names.  Only  a 
little  in  the  way  of  recapitulation,  for  illustration’s  sake. 


130  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Second  Precinct,  7  saloons  open,  55  people  present; 
Fourth  Precinct,  10  saloons  open,  45  people  present; 
Fourteenth  Precinct,  15  saloons,  167  people  present; 
Nineteenth  Precinct  (that  is  ours),  18  saloons  open, 
205  people  present.  In  all  (I  do  not  mean  all  the 
saloons  that  were  open,  but  all  the  open  ones  that  our 
detectives  happened  to  strike),  in  all,  254  saloons,  2,438 
people  present.  They  don’t  want  ‘generalities/  they 
want  particularities.  Well,  there  are  254  of  them,  not 
pulpit  grandiloquence,  nor  ministerial  exuberance,  but 
hard  cold  affidavits.  If  the  concerned  guardians  of 
the  public  peace  and  the  anxious  conservators  of  mu¬ 
nicipal  laws  want  facts  we  will  guarantee  to  grind  them 
out  a  fresh  grist  every  blessed  week.  Now,  let  them 
take  vigorous  hold  of  the  material  furnished  above,  or 
quit  their  hypocritical  clamoring  after  specific  charges. 

“We  have  interested  ourselves  also  in  gambling- 
houses,  of  which  I  mention  two  because  of  the  youth¬ 
ful  character  of  their  patrons;  one  near  40th  Street  in 
which  were  counted  forty  young  men  and  another  three 
blocks  above  this  church  where  were  forty-eight.  More 
young  men  in  either  of  these  places  than  are  ever  seen 
in  our  church. 

“Leaving  the  gambling-houses  for  the  present,  I  must 
report  to  you  what  was  discovered  in  a  region  of  in¬ 
iquity  that  in  this  presence  will  have  to  be  dealt  with 
with  as  much  caution  and  delicacy  as  the  nature  of  the 
subject  will  allow.  I  have  here  a  list  of  thirty  houses, 
names  and  addresses,  all  specified,  that  are  simply 
houses  of  prostitution,  all  of  them  in  this  precinct. 
These  thirty  places  were  all  of  them  visited  by  my 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  131 


friend,  or  my  detective,  on  the  10th  and  also  on  the 
11th  of  March,  and  solicitations  received  on  both  dates. 
I  spent  an  hour  in  one  of  these  places  myself,  and  I 
know  perfectly  well  what  it  all  means,  and  with  what 
entire  facility  such  houses  can  be  gotten  into.  That 
house  is  three  blocks  only  from  the  spot  where  I  am 
now  standing.  All  of  this  has  been  neatly  typewritten, 
sworn  to,  corroborated,  and  is  subject  to  the  call  of 
the  District  Attorney. 

“And  now,  fathers  and  mothers,  I  am  trying  to  help 
your  sons.  From  the  very  commencement  of  my  min¬ 
istry  here  I  confess  that  to  be  of  some  encouragement 
and  assistance  to  young  men  has  been  my  great  ambi¬ 
tion.  Appeal  after  appeal  has  come  to  me  these  last 
four  weeks,  signed  ‘A  Father’  or  ‘A  Mother/  beg¬ 
ging  me  to  try  to  do  something  for  their  dear  boys. 
But  as  things  are,  I  do  declare  there  is  not  much  that 
I  can  do  for  them.  I  never  knew  till  within  three 
weeks  how  almost  impossible  it  is  for  a  young  man 
to  be  in  the  midst  of  the  swim  of  New  York  City  life, 
under  present  conditions,  and  still  be  temperate  and 
clean.  I  had  supposed  that  the  coarse,  bestial  vices 
were  fenced  off  from  youthful  contact  with  some  show 
at  least  of  police  restriction.  So  far  as  I  have  been  able 
to  read  the  symptoms  of  the  case,  I  don’t  discover  the 
restrictions.  There  is  little  advantage  in  preaching  the 
Gospel  to  a  young  fellow  on  Sunday  if  he  is  going  to 
be  sitting  on  the  edge  of  a  Tammany-maintained  hell 
the  rest  of  the  week. 

“Don’t  tell  me  I  don’t  know  what  I  am  talking  about. 
Many  a  long,  dismal,  heart-sickening  night,  in  the  com- 


132  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


pany  of  two  trusty  friends,  have  I  spent  since  I  spoke 
on  this  matter  before,  going  down  into  the  disgusting 
depths  of  this  Tammany-debauched  town;  and  it  is 
rotten  with  a  rottenness  that  is  unspeakable  and  in¬ 
describable,  and  a  rottenness  that  would  be  absolutely 
impossible  except  by  the  connivance,  not  to  say  the 
purchased  sympathy  of  the  men  whose  one  obligation 
before  God,  men,  and  their  own  conscience  is  to  shield 
virtue  and  make  vice  difficult.  Now  that  I  stand  by, 
because  before  Almighty  God,  I  know  it,  and  I  will 
stand  by  it  though  buried  beneath  presentments  as  thick 
as  autumn  leaves  in  Vallombrosa,  or  snowflakes  in  a 
March  blizzard. 

“Excuse  the  personal  reference  to  myself  in  all  this, 
but  I  cannot  help  it.  I  never  dreamed  that  any  force 
of  circumstances  would  ever  draw  me  into  contacts 
so  coarse,  so  beastly,  so  consummately  filthy  as  those 
where  I  have  repeatedly  found  myself  in  the  midst  of 
these  last  days.  I  feel  as  though  I  wanted  to  go  out 
of  town  for  a  month  to  bleach  the  memory  of  it  out 
of  my  mind  and  the  vision  of  it  out  of  my  eyes. 

“I  am  not  ignorant  of  the  colossal  spasms  of  indig¬ 
nation  into  which  the  trustees  of  Tammany  ethics  have 
been  thrown  by  the  blunt  and  inelegant  characteriza¬ 
tion  of  a  month  ago,  and  I  have  a  clear,  as  well  as  a 
serene  anticipation  of  what  I  have  to  expect  from  the 
same  sources  for  having  deliberately  sought  out  and 
entered  into  the  very  presence  of  iniquity  in  its  vilest 
shape.  But  the  grim  and  desolate  part  of  it  all  is  that 
these  things  are  all  open  and  perfectly  easily  accessible. 
The  young  men,  your  boys,  probably  know  that  they 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  133 


are.  The  door  will  be  open  to  them  and  the  blue-coated 
guardian  of  civic  virtue  will  not  molest  them.  I  spent 
an  hour  in  such  a  place  yesterday  morning,  and  when 
we  came  down  the  steps  I  almost  tumbled  over  a  police¬ 
man  who  appeared  to  be  doing  picket  duty  on  the 
curbstone. 

“To  say  that  the  police  do  not  know  what  is  going 
on  and  where  it  is  going  on,  with  all  the  brilliant  symp¬ 
toms  of  the  character  of  the  place  distinctly  in  view 
is  rot.  I  do  not  ask  any  one  to  excuse  or  to  apologize 
for  my  language.  You  have  got  to  fit  your  words  to 
your  theme.  We  do  not  handle  charcoal  with  a  silver 
ladle  nor  carry  city  garbage  out  to  the  dumping  ground 
in  a  steam-yacht.  Anyone  who,  with  all  the  easily 
ascertainable  facts  in  view,  denies  that  drunkenness, 
gambling  and  licentiousness  in  this  town  are  munici¬ 
pally  protected,  is  either  a  knave  or  an  idiot.  Here 
is  one  of  the  rules  and  regulations  of  the  Police  De¬ 
partment:  ‘It  is  the  duty  of  the  Superintendent  to 
enforce  in  the  city  of  New  York  all  the  laws  of  the 
State  and  ordinances  of  the  city  of  New  York  and 
ordinances  of  the  Board  of  Health,  and  the  rules  and 
regulations  of  the  Board  of  Police;  to  abate  all  gam¬ 
ing  houses,  rooms,  and  premises  and  places  kept  or 
used  for  lewd  or  obscene  purposes,  and  places  kept  or 
used  for  the  sale  of  lottery  tickets  or  policies.’  With 
the  backing  then  of  such  facts  legally  certified  to  as 
have  been  presented  this  morning,  we  insist  in  behalf 
of  an  insulted  and  outraged  public,  that  the  Police 
Department  from  its  top  down,  shall  without  further 
shift  or  evasion,  proceed  with  an  iron  hand  to  close 


134  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


up  gambling-houses,  houses  of  prostitution,  and  whis¬ 
key-shops  open  in  illegal  hours.  If  this  is  what  they 
cannot  do,  let  them  concede  the  point,  and  give  place 
to  some  one  who  can.  If  this  is  what  they  will  not  do, 
let  them  stand  squarely  on  the  issue  and  be  impeached 
according  to  the  provisions  of  the  Code. 

“In  a  closing  word,  voicing  the  righteous  indignation 
of  the  pure  and  honest  citizenship  of  this  tyrannized 
municipality,  let  me  in  a  representative  way  say  to 
Tammany:  For  four  weeks  you  have  been  wincing 
under  the  sting  of  a  general  indictment,  and  have  been 
calling  for  particulars.  This  morning  I  have  given 
you  particulars,  two  hundred  and  eighty-four  of  them. 
Now,  what  are  you  going  to  do  with  them?” 

Tammany  Hall  blackguarded  me  for  preaching  my 
sermon  of  February  14th  because  I  indulged  in  gen¬ 
eralities  and  spoke  from  hearsay,  but  that  was  not  a 
circumstance  to  the  way  they  blackguarded  me  for  my 
sermon  of  March  13th  because  I  gave  them  particulars 
and  spoke  from  personal  knowledge.  There  is  dif¬ 
ficulty  in  proceeding  against  criminals  in  a  way  that 
will  conform  to  their  convenience.  Being  of  a  legal 
mind  it  had  seemed  to  me  that  the  District  Attorney 
would  be  gratified  by  the  particularity  of  my  legally 
sustained  charges,  but  I  received  no  intimation  from 
him  to  that  effect.  The  only  comment  that  I  heard 
of  Police  Commissioner  Markine  passing  upon  the  dis¬ 
course  was  to  express  regret  at  the  effect  that  must 
have  been  produced  upon  the  pure-hearted  attendants 
at  my  church  that  morning;  which  indicates  that  all 
the  threats,  official  and  unofficial,  that  were  flung  at 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  135 


me  on  the  occasion  of  my  first  sermon  were  simply 
parts  of  one  stupendous  game  of  bluff  played  in  order 
to  deter  me  and  every  one  else  from  anything  more  of 
the  same  kind. 

The  March  grand  jury  under  Henry  M.  Tabor, 
as  its  foreman,  in  session  shortly  after  the  delivery  of 
the  sermon  from  which  I  have  just  quoted,  adopted 
the  following  resolution:  “Resolved,  that  the  District 
Attorney  be,  and  hereby  is  requested  to  produce  all 
evidence  before  this  grand  jury  regarding  the  cases 
referred  to  by  Dr.  Parkhurst  and  his  associates  and 
society’s  agents  and  request  Dr.  Parkhurst  and  his 
agents  to  appear  before  this  jury  at  the  earliest  prac¬ 
ticable  moment.” 

I  took  the  liberty  of  intimating  to  the  grand  jury 
that  I  had  no  interest  in  their  securing  indictments 
against  the  particular  houses  upon  which  my  testimony 
bore,  and  that  my  purpose  reached  further  than  that, 
viz.,  to  the  Police  Department  by  which  those  houses 
were  protected.  Whether  the  jury  was  influenced  by 
my  request  I  cannot  say  but  the  presentment  which 
was  issued  against  the  Police  Department,  extracts 
from  which  I  subjoin,  was  exactly  what  I  wanted,  as 
follows: 

“A  large  amount  of  testimony  has  been  presented 
showing  the  existence  and  violation  of  law  in  large 
numbers  of  these  places.  The  grand  jury  has  indicted 
the  proprietors  of  some  of  these  places,  and  they  have 
been  arrested  under  such  indictments  and  have  pleaded. 
In  these  very  cases  further  testimony  has  been  pre¬ 
sented  showing  that  there  was  no  abatement  in  these 


136  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


premises  of  the  same  disorderly  practices,  and  that 
there  was  no  appearance  of  police  interference. 

“With  the  facts  before  us  that  these  places  do  exist 
in  large  numbers,  that  they  are  well  known  to  the  police, 
that  their  locations  and  special  lines  of  business  are 
recorded  by  the  Department,  and  that  very  particular 
and  express  duties  are  imposed  by  law  upon  the  police 
to  inspect  and  repress  these  places  (Section  282)  and 
that  extraordinary  powers  of  breaking  into  houses  with¬ 
out  previous  application  for  judicial  warrants  are  al¬ 
lowed  to  the  police  in  order  that  they  may  perform 
such  duties  (Section  285)  and  with  the  fact  that  has 
plainly  appeared  to  us  that  the  police  seldom  use  these 
powers,  or  even  apply  to  magistrates  for  warrants  to 
carry  out  their  legal  duties,  there  are  presented  to  us 
the  best  reasons  for  condemning  the  inaction  of  the 
Police  Department  in  these  matters.  They  are  either 
incompetent  to  do  what  is  frequently  done  by  private 
individuals  with  imperfect  facilities  for  such  work,  or 
else  there  exist  reasons  and  motives  for  such  inaction 
which  are  illegal  and  corrupt.  The  general  efficiency 
of  the  Department  is  so  great  that  it  is  our  belief  that 
the  latter  suggestion  is  the  explanation  of  the  peculiar 
inactivity. 

“Indeed  the  publicity  with  which  the  law  is  violated 
and  the  immunity  from  arrest  enjoyed  by  the  law¬ 
breaker  is  inconsistent  with  any  other  theory.  It  is 
obvious  that  when  a  confession  by  a  lawbreaker  of 
payment  for  protection  would  subject  him  to  penalties 
not  only  for  his  acknowledged  crime  but  also  for  bribe¬ 
giving,  it  is  extremely  difficult  to  collect  trustworthy 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  137 


evidence  in  direct  proof  of  such  charges.  It  has  been 
thought  best  at  the  present  time  to  go  no  further  than 
to  make  this  general  presentment,  so  that  the  courts 
and  the  residents  of  our  city  may  be  properly  informed 
and  warned  against  the  dangerous  evil  that  is  in  the 
midst  of  us. 

“The  foregoing  was  unanimously  adopted. 

Henry  M.  Tabor,  Foreman, 
Grand  Jury  Room,  March  31st,  1892.” 

Public  sentiment  was  very  considerably  affected  by 
the  grand  jury’s  condemnation  of  the  Police  Depart¬ 
ment,  as  was  manifested,  for  instance,  by  an  invitation 
to  speak  in  Washington  which  was  signed  by  the  pas¬ 
tor  of  the  Church  of  the  Covenant  in  that  city,  Justice 
William  Strong,  Honorable  H.  L.  Dawes,  John  Wana- 
maker  and  S.  B.  Elkins.  I  began  to  feel  that  I  was 
becoming  respectable.  President  Rankin  of  Howard 
University  presided  on  the  occasion,  and  in  the  course 
of  his  introductory  remarks  said:  “What  Dr.  Park- 
hurst  has  done  for  New  York  he  has  not  done  for  New 
York  alone.  He  has  done  it  for  Washington  and 
Chicago  and  every  other  great  city  on  this  continent. 
If  there  is  any  shame  in  the  act,  we  Christian  citizens 
of  this  capital  city  of  the  nation  wish  by  our  presence 
here  to  participate  in  that  shame.  When  a  thing  ought 
to  be  done,  it  must  be  done  in  the  only  manner  in 
which  it  can  be  done.  There  is  no  inconsistency  be¬ 
tween  the  scourge  of  small  cords  for  the  back  of  the 
tempter,  and  the  tender  words,  ‘Neither  do  I  condemn 
thee’  for  the  ear  of  the  broken-hearted  penitent.  The 


138  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Lion  of  the  tribe  of  Judah  is  the  Lamb  of  God  that 
takes  away  the  sin  of  the  world.” 

Mention  should  be  made  of  the  mass  meeting  held 
in  Cooper  Union  Hall  in  June,  ’92.  It  rather  marked 
the  turning  of  the  tide  and  was  the  first  popular  ex¬ 
pression  of  sympathy.  I  must  include  an  extract  from 
the  address  given  by  ex- Judge  Noah  Davis.  The 
judge,  whose  participation  in  the  breaking  of  the  Tweed 
Ring  made  his  interest  in  the  present  cause  so  natural 
and  so  gratifying,  was  enthusiastically  greeted.  He 
said  in  part:  “You  have  come  here  to  answer  the 
question  whether  or  not  your  boys  shall  be  brought  up 
in  the  midst  of  officially  protected  crime.  If  you  say 
that  that  shall  not  be  done,  you  can  only  say  it  just 
now  by  your  applause,  but  later,  by  your  hearty  devo¬ 
tion  to  those  who  have  courage  to  pluck  aside  the  cur¬ 
tain  and  show  just  where  we  live,  and  what  we  are, 
and  what  is  around  us.  Most  men  tell  us  that  the 
President  of  this  Society  should  never  have  done  what 
he  has  done ;  that  a  minister  of  the  Gospel  should  spend 
his  whole  life  persuading  mankind  to  make  some  atone¬ 
ment  for  the  sin  of  Adam;  that  he  should  let  all  mod¬ 
ern  Adams  alone;  that  he  should  preach  upon  the  old 
line,  ‘In  Adam’s  fall  we  sinned  all.’  I  make  no  pre¬ 
tensions  to  fighting  Adam  myself,  but  if  I  had  been 
brought  face  to  face  with  the  situation  that  confronted 
Dr.  Parkhurst,  if  my  charges  had  been  denied,  if  a 
district  attorney  had  laughed  at  me,  if  a  grand  jury 
had  pointed  the  finger  of  scorn  at  me,  I  would  have 
dived  to  the  bottom  of  hell,  if  need  be,  to  prove  that 
I  had  spoken  the  truth.  If  there  be  clergymen  in  this 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  139 


country  or  this  city  or  anywhere,  who  say  they  could 
not  have  gone  through  such  a  thing,  all  I  have  to  say 
is  that  they  know  more  about  themselves  than  I  know. 
By  that  I  mean  only  just  what  you  think  I  mean/’ 

The  Cooper  Union  meeting  was  suggested  and  ar¬ 
ranged  for  by  Mr.  James  A.  Scrymser,  who  threw 
himself  into  the  cause  at  an  opportune  moment.  I  can¬ 
not  speak  too  highly  of  his  wise  and  effective  coopera¬ 
tion.  His  influence  with  the  leaders  of  the  press  was 
the  means  of  securing  the  support  of  the  Mail  and 
Express ,  the  Post  and  Herald ,  and  also  the  City  Club. 

In  connection  with  him  I  should  pay  my  grateful 
respects  to  the  memory  of  Charles  Stewart  Smith.  We 
came  into  very  close  relations  with  each  other.  Before 
I  had  known  of  his  particular  interest  in  the  movement 
he  called  upon  me  one  morning  and  said, — “Doctor, 
I  am  going  to  take  off  my  coat  and  enter  into  the  fight, 
even  if  it  takes  five  years  off  of  my  life.”  The  asso¬ 
ciation  with  such  men  as  I  am  mentioning, — and  there 
was  a  host  of  them, — was  one  bright  feature  in  my 
two  years  of  otherwise  disagreeable  experience. 

Until  the  movement  was  well  under  way  the  churchly 
element  of  the  population  showed  a  distinctly  retiring 
disposition,  with  a  distinguished  exception  in  the  per¬ 
son  of  Bishop  Potter,  who  was  with  me  from  the  first 
and  declared  his  sympathy  in  so  public  a  way  as  to 
leave  no  uncertainty  as  to  his  attitude.  When  the  New 
York  Presbytery  had  a  session  to  discuss  the  question 
as  to  what  that  body  should  think  of  me,  Henry  Van 
Dyke  rose  and  said, — “I  do  not  think  the  real  ques- 


140  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


tion  is  what  we  think  of  the  Doctor,  but  what  the 
Doctor  is  going  to  think  of  us?” 

It  is  useless  to  undertake  any  detailed  account  of 
the  activities  of  the  months  following.  Whether  we 
won  our  cases  in  court  or  lost  them,  the  matter  was 
kept  constantly  in  the  air.  I  addressed  grilling  letters 
to  Byrnes,  Superintendent  of  Police,  and  he  grilled  me 
in  return.  The  newspapers  were  kept  well  supplied 
with  material,  and  they  used  it  faithfully.  When 

Judge  -  charged  me  with  keeping  a  detective  on 

Byrnes  I  replied  that,  if  I  chose,  I  should  keep  a 
detective  on  the  Judge  himself;  that  that  is  what  detec¬ 
tives  are  for.  All  such  matter  kept  the  fire  burning. 
And  so  I  hasten  to  the  determinative  part  taken  by  the 
Chamber  of  Commerce. 

The  action  taken  by  the  Chamber  of  Commerce  was 
in  part  due  to  our  failure  to  secure  the  conviction  of 
Captain  Devery.  Devery  was  about  as  thoroughly 
developed  a  product  of  the  Tammany  system  as  we 
ran  against  in  all  our  encounters  and  in  consequence 
he  received  from  us  an  exceptional  amount  of  atten¬ 
tion.  He  was  not  lacking  in  a  certain  kind  of  genius 
but  it  all  ran  on  depraved  lines.  His  precinct  was  an 
open  advertisement  of  his  character  and  we  made  an 
analytic  study  of  it  to  use  in  dealing  with  him.  We 
succeeded  in  having  the  grand  jury  indict  him,  but 
the  trial  jury  that  he  was  brought  before  was  of  a 
complexion  favorable  to  Devery’s  interests  and  we  were 
defeated. 

The  defeat,  however,  as  had  frequently  happened 
before,  worked  to  our  advantage,  for  his  own  dis- 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  141 


reputable  character  and  that  of  his  precinct  had  been 
so  widely  published  that  the  public  felt  itself  outraged 
by  the  acquittal  and  realized  that  no  reliance  could 
be  put  upon  the  courts  for  the  purification  of  the 
Police  Department.  Among  other  results  was  action 
on  the  part  of  the  Chamber  of  Commerce. 

At  the  meeting  of  the  Chamber  January  25th,  1894, 
Mr.  Augustus  H.  Schwab  presented  three  resolutions 
of  which  the  third  was  adopted;  which  read:  “Re¬ 
solved,  That  in  the  opinion  of  this  Chamber  there  should 
be  a  thorough  legislative  investigation  of  the  Police 
Department  before  any  radical  change  is  made  in  its 
administration.” 

In  response  to  this  action  of  the  Chamber  and  in 
compliance  with  the  earnest  sentiment  prevailing  in  this 
city  a  resolution  authorizing  such  investigation  was 
introduced  into  the  Senate  by  Senator  Clarence  Lexow. 

This  resolution  was  adopted  and  a  committee  of 
seven  members  appointed  to  carry  it  into  effect.  Of 
this  committee  Clarence  Lexow  was  chairman. 

It  should  be  stated  at  this  point  that  the  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Crime  was  not  altogether  sympa¬ 
thetic  with  this  movement.  Nor, — as  will  appear  later 
on, — was  its  hesitancy  altogether  without  justification. 
When  we  put  a  matter  into  the  hands  of  politicians  we 
do  not  know  exactly  where  it  is  or  whether  we  shall 
ever  see  it  again.  The  total  result  of  most  investiga¬ 
tion  is  the  pecuniary  indemnification  of  the  investi¬ 
gators  for  their  fruitless  waste  of  time. 

The  following  telegram  was  received  here  almost 
immediately  after  the  names  of  the  Investigating 


142  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Committee  were  announced,  indicating  their  readiness 
to  undertake  their  work,  or  at  least  their  curiosity  to 
come  down  and  inspect  our  work: — ‘‘Senate  Committee 
to  Investigate  Police  Department  of  New  York  will 
meet  at  the  Hotel  Metropole,  Friday  evening  at  four 
o’clock.  Like  to  have  you  present,  and  ready  to  sug¬ 
gest  names  of  counsel  to  conduct  the  investigation, 
from  which  the  Committee  may  make  its  selection.  We 
will  be  ready  to  hear  testimony  Saturday  at  ten  a.m. — 
Clarence  Lexow,  Chairman” 

The  Committee  made  their  first  appearance  in  town 
on  the  evening  of  February  2nd,  and  convened  in  the 
parlor  of  the  Hotel  Metropole,  a  number  of  gentlemen 
interested  in  the  investigation, — among  others  Messrs. 
Charles  Stewart  Smith,  Darwin  R.  James,  Gustav 
Schwab,  and  myself, — being  admitted  to  the  confer¬ 
ence.  Probably  none  of  us  ever  attended  a  gathering 
so  critical  in  its  character  that  was  so  absolutely  unin¬ 
teresting  and  hopeless.  After  the  Committee  had  dis¬ 
posed  themselves  and  been  called  to  order  by  Mr. 
Lexow,  the  Chairman  stated  that  they  were  a  Sena¬ 
torial  Committee  of  Investigation  and  that  they  were 
now  present  in  their  judicial  capacity  and  called  upon 
Mr.  Smith  as  representative  of  the  Chamber  which  had 
requested  the  investigation  to  state  his  case.  Mr. 
Smith  courteously  replied  that  he  had  no  case,  but  sup¬ 
posed  the  Committee  had  come  down  to  make  one. 
The  Senators  gave  quiet  token  of  a  sense  of  rebuff  and 
of  having  their  feelings  crumpled.  “Then  certainly 
Dr.  Parkhurst  has  a  case?”  said  Chairman  Lexow. 
With  possibly  less  urbanity  than  had  been  exhibited  by 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  143 


Mr.  Smith  I  replied  not  only  that  I  had  no  case,  but 
that  I  had  serious  misgivings  as  to  the  wisdom  of  their 
coming  down  to  New  York  anyway. 

Up  to  that  time  the  Senators  had  had  not  the  slightest 
inkling  or  suspicion  of  what  they  had  come  down  for. 
They  had  heard  a  good  deal  about  the  fault  that  some 
of  us  had  been  finding  with  the  police  force,  and  they 
imagined  that  all  they  had  to  do  was  to  put  in  two  days 
a  week  for  the  next  three  weeks  (or  till  the  20th  of 
February)  sizing  up  the  researches  of  the  Society  for 
the  Prevention  of  Crime.  In  other  words,  they  had 
come  down  not  to  investigate  the  Police  Department, 
but  to  investigate  our  investigation  of  it.  At  a  late 
hour  the  Committee  adjourned  in  a  distinctly  interrog¬ 
ative  frame  of  mind. 

The  session  held  the  day  following  was  of  the  same 
general  complexion  only  rather  more  so.  Clear  inti¬ 
mations  of  distrust  were  expressed  by  some  of  us,  and 
the  Committee  was  politely  reminded  that  there  had 
been  a  previous  committee  sent  down  from  Albany  on 
a  similar  errand  and  that  when  the  inquisition  began 
to  grow  interesting,  the  committee  was  “called  off.” 
We  ventured  to  suggest  whether  there  was  any  danger 
of  history  repeating  itself.  We  none  of  us  wanted  to 
show  any  disrespect  to  our  visiting  statesmen,  but 
we  had  scruples  against  so  far  committing  ourselves 
to  the  senatorial  wave  as  to  run  the  risk  of  being 
swamped  if  the  tide  should  happen  to  go  out  to  sea. 
We  knew  we  had  been  working  two  years  in  accom¬ 
plishing  what  little  we  had,  and  that  it  would  take  these 
seven  Senators,  many  of  them  from  a  remote  part  of 


144  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


the  State,  and  as  ignorant  of  the  details  of  the  situation 
as  though  they  had  been  born  on  the  Pacific  Slope,  a 
good  deal  more  than  the  eighteen  days  within  which 
time  by  the  terms  of  the  Senate’s  resolution,  they  were 
to  be  prepared  to  make  their  report.  We  also  seriously 
questioned  whether  any  representatives  from  an  Albany 
legislature  could  be  trusted  to  bring  in  a  report  adverse 
to  Tammany. 

Then  there  was  the  critical  question  as  to  who  should 
serve  the  Lexow  Committee  as  counsel.  The  Com¬ 
mittee  had  up  their  sleeve  as  counsel  a  man  from  West¬ 
ern  New  York  who  knew  no  more  about  the  case  than 
the  Committee  did,  and  he  was  actually  set  to  work. 
We  had  our  own  man  for  the  position,  John  W.  Goff, 
and  it  was  only  as  result  of  severe  pressure  upon  him 
that  we  succeeded  in  inducing  him  to  take  the  place  and 
only  by  some  adroit  work  on  our  part  that  we  got  him 
established  in  the  position  in  place  of  the  adviser  de¬ 
sired  by  the  Committee.  We  knew  the  man,  and  knew 
also  that  once  he  secured  his  grip  upon  the  investiga¬ 
tion  there  would  be  no  shaking  him  off  and  that  the 
results  aimed  at  by  us  (not  by  the  Lexow  Committee) 
would  be  achieved  and  they  were,  to  the  distinguished 
credit  of  Mr.  Goff  and  to  the  triumph  of  our  cause. 

The  details  of  the  investigation,  which  continued  for 
a  year,  and  which  fill  several  volumes,  I  have  no  inten¬ 
tion  even  to  recapitulate.  It  is  sufficient  to  say  that 
it  was  Mr.  Goff  and  his  associates,  working  under  the 
auspices  of  the  Lexow  Committee  (which  in  time  be¬ 
came  disciplined  to  a  receptive  attitude  of  mind)  that 
put  the  cap-sheaf  to  the  efforts  of  the  two  previous 


ASSAULT  UPON  TAMMANY  INTEREST  145 


years,  triumphantly  demonstrated  the  truth  of  all  and 
more  than  all  the  charges  which  I  had  urged  against 
the  Fourteenth  Street  organization,  and  so  deeply  im¬ 
pressed  the  popular  mind  that  minor  considerations 
passed  out  of  view,  and  the  intelligent  conscience  of  an 
aroused  municipality  accomplished  the  nomination  and 
election  of  a  Mayor  who  owed  no  fealty  to  Tammany 
Hall  and  was  free  to  achieve  the  best  interests  of  the 
municipality. 


Part  II 

REFLECTIONS 


REFLECTIONS 


It  is  an  education  in  itself  to  come  in  contact,  as  I 
have  for  sixty  years,  with  the  events  of  thoughtful  and 
stirring  times,  and  with  men  of  all  classes  who  were 
involved  in  those  events,  or  at  any  rate  more  or  less 
interestedly  concerned  in  them.  A  few  out  of  the  many 
reactions  which  such  contact  has  effected  in  my  own 
mind  seem  properly  to  have  a  place  in  my  auto¬ 
biography. 

Words  do  not  admit  of  being  more  than  a  tentative 
expression  of  idea;  and  the  longer  they  are,  especially 
if  they  are  of  classic  origin,  the  greater  the  variety  of 
idea  which  they  may  be  employed  to  convey.  That  is 
one  of  the  difficulties  which  prosecutors  encounter  in 
trials  for  heresy.  Out  of  this  ambiguity  of  language 
has  grown  the  following  article  entitled, 

1. 

AM  I  A  TRINITARIAN? 

One  reason  for  supposing  that  I  am,  is  that  I  have 
always  called  myself  such.  My  father  was,  and  as  he 
was  a  man  of  decided  views  and  in  whose  views  upon 
all  matters  I  had  implicit  confidence,  I  accepted  his 
theological  opinions  along  with  the  rest;  at  any  rate  I 
accepted  the  phrases  in  which  he  embodied  his  opinions 
and  this  one  of  the  Trinity  along  with  others. 

He  considered  that  his  position  upon  all  matters  of 
religious  conviction  was  the  absolute  truth,  so  that  for 
me  to  vary  from  them  or  from  any  one  of  them,  would 

149 


150  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


have  been  to  put  myself  in  a  relation  of  antagonism  to 
him,  which  would  have  created  an  unpleasant  situation 
both  for  him  and  for  myself.  I  suppose  that  if  with 
the  same  conviction  and  determination  of  mind  he  had 
been  a  Unitarian  I  should  have  been  a  Unitarian,  and 
if  I  had  entered  the  ministry  under  those  conditions 
should  have  been  pastor  of  a  Unitarian  church.  I  am 
simply  supposing  the  same  outworking  of  influences 
that  we  regularly  discover  in  other  cases. 

When  I  became  old  enough  to  attend  church  I  lis¬ 
tened  of  course  to  Trinitarian  doctrine,  which  was, 
naturally  enough,  the  same  as  my  father’s  doctrine  and 
therefore  drove  still  further  home  the  paternal  inheri¬ 
tance  of  which  I  was  already  in  possession.  Then  when 
I  was  still  further  advanced  in  powers  of  comprehen¬ 
sion  I  was  put  upon  the  Westminster  Assembly’s 
Shorter  Catechism,  which  was  called  “Shorter  Cate¬ 
chism”  because  there  was  another  catechism  emanating 
from  the  same  source  that  was  even  longer. 

It  is  a  wonderful  document,  and  bound  to  be  con¬ 
sidered  as  such  whatever  may  be  the  theological  posi¬ 
tion  of  the  one  contemplating  it,  and  was  impressively 
confirmatory  of  what  I  had  acquired  from  my  father 
and  listened  to  from  the  pulpit.  As  was  said  to  me  by 
one  who  took  exception  to  some  positions  taken  in  it, 
“It  is  nevertheless  a  good  thing  to  have  in  the  system.” 
It  is  a  masculine  production.  It  handles  doctrines,  even 
incomprehensible  doctrines,  with  masterliness  of  intelli¬ 
gence.  I  might  say  that  that  and  the  American  Con¬ 
stitution  are  the  two  greatest  documents  that  have  been 
humanly  produced.  Although  its  authors  were  dealing 


REFLECTIONS 


151 


with  many  matters  which  of  course  they  could  not 
understand,  those  matters  were  nevertheless  handled 
with  a  breadth  of  phraseology  which  disguised  its 
necessary  incompetency.  So  that  the  reader  and 
student  of  the  catechism,  by  familiarizing  himself  with 
its  contents,  acquired  an  enlargement  rather  than  a 
contraction  of  views  upon  celestial  and  divine  things. 

If  valid  Trinitarianism  however  carries  with  it  the 
doctrine  of  three  persons  in  the  Godhead,  I  am  not  a 
Trinitarian,  for  I  am  a  rigid  Monotheist  and  in  no 
sense  a  polytheist.  One  God,  recognized  as  distinctly 
and  unqualifiedly  one,  is  all  that  my  theology  will  bear ; 
and  that  one  God  must  be  something  essentially  distinct 
from  a  summary  of  three  fractional  Gods,  one  holding 
one  office,  another  another  office  and  a  third  function¬ 
ing  in  a  way  different  from  that  of  the  other  two. 
The  unity  of  his  infinite  personality  must  be  in  all  that 
he  is  and  in  all  that  he  does.  Otherwise  his  unity  is  a 
compromise  with  polytheism,  and  compromise  under 
such  conditions  is  fatal.  I  would  surrender  all  claim 
to  being  a  Trinitarian  if  in  order  to  be  such  I  had 
to  accept  a  modified  conception  of  God’s  unqualified 
and  absolute  personal  oneness.  Only  upon  such  bed¬ 
rock  would  I  found  my  work  as  a  preacher  or  my  ex¬ 
perience  as  a  believer. 

The  strain  of  the  situation  is  particularly  felt  when 
we  come  to  deal  with  the  Christ.  I  never  taught,  nor 
have  I  ever  thought  of  teaching,  that  Christ  was  God. 
“No  man  hath  seen  God  at  any  time!”  I  accept  that  as 
final.  That  is  not  saying  that  God  was  not  in  Christ. 
Whether  he  was  in  him  in  a  way  different  from  that  in 


152  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


which  he  is  in  others,  some  others,  I  do  not  know.  I 
have  not  the  means  of  knowing.  I  like  to  think  that  he 
was.  His  life  seems  to  imply  as  much,  but  not  that  he 
was  in  him  in  a  way  that  involved  any  divine  duality  or 
twofold  personality. 

Of  course  I  never  preached  that  Christ  was  God. 
I  never  went  beyond  saying  that  Christ  interpreted  God 
to  the  human  consciousness.  My  preaching  for  forty 
years  consisted  to  a  considerable  extent  in  what  I  said, 
and  to  another  considerable  extent  in  what  I  did  not 
say.  Webster  said  “I  do  not  pretend  to  discuss  the 
arithmetic  of  God.”  There  are  some  matters  that  are 
confused  by  the  attempt  to  clarify  them.  In  the 
presence  of  infinity  the  intricacies  and  fine  manipula¬ 
tions  of  human  thought  are  an  intrusion.  They  are 
presumptuous  even  in  a  school  of  theology,  ridiculous 
when  indulged  in  before  a  congregation.  Religion  and 
man’s  philosophy  of  religion  are  only  very  distantly 
related.  A  reality  may  be  simple  enough  to  the  heart 
even  while  remaining  inexplicable  to  the  mind.  In  the 
presence  of  the  entire  world’s  profundity  of  mind  it 
still  remains  true  that  “Out  of  the  heart  are  the  issues 
of  life.”  God  has  in  some  way  so  humanized  himself 
in  Christ  that  we  are  not  put  to  the  task  of  solving  the 
underlying  problem  of  Deity. 

Our  Bible  is  one  volume, — not  two, — from  Genesis 
to  Revelations.  It  is  divided  into  two  chapters  of  one 
book.  It  is  revelation  coming  from  one  source  and  in 
its  two  portions  adjusted  to  successive  conditions  of 
the  race  and  to  two  successive  necessities  in  the  indi- 


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vidual  man.  The  fact  that  the  Gospel  is  of  consid¬ 
erably  later  date  has  led  to  the  unfortunate 

2. 

UNDERVALUATION  OF  THE  OLD  TESTAMENT 

The  Bible  is  one,  given  us  in  two  parts,  which  follow 
in  the  order  of  time  and  in  the  course  of  human  devel¬ 
opment  ;  essentially  a  unit  however,  and  to  be  practically 
treated  as  such,  if  the  combined  whole  is  to  accomplish 
for  the  individual  and  for  society  the  purpose  for  which 
it  was  intended.  Each  of  the  two  sections  stands  by 
itself,  but  at  the  same  time  receives  reenforcement 
from  the  other  and  conveys  reenforcement  to  the  other. 

The  fundamental  note  of  the  older  Scripture  is  man’s 
obligation  to  the  One  God.  It  is  a  volume  of  law,  the 
proclamation  of  divine  will.  There  are  in  it  scanty 
references  to  love,  whether  God’s  love  or  man’s  love,™ 
matter  which  is  in  the  main  deferred  to  a  more  ap¬ 
propriate  season.  This  portion  of  the  Bible  may  not 
be  fitted  to  produce  character  of  so  delicate  and 
gracious  a  type  as  is  afforded  under  influences  that  are 
less  strenuous,  although  there  are  exceptional  person¬ 
ages,  with  biographical  details  recorded  in  the  early 
pages  of  Scripture,  who  seem  to  have  lived  beyond 
their  own  time  and  to  have  anticipated  some  aspects  of 
truth  whose  full  realization  came  later. 

Those  who  yielded  themselves  to  the  discipline  of  the 
Hebrew  Scriptures  learned  the  lesson  of  subjection  to 
guaranteed  authority.  It  is  a  hard  lesson,  but  is  as 
fundamental  as  it  is  hard.  Deep  establishment  is  the 
first  step  in  every  line  of  construction.  Foundation  is 


154  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


expensive  and  it  is  not  winsome.  In  house-building  it 
is  placed  out  of  sight  and  the  heavier  the  superstructure 
that  it  is  to  carry  the  lower  the  foundation  requires  to 
be  laid. 

There  is  an  analogy  between  the  building  of  a  house 
and  the  building  of  a  man,  which  speaks  with  effect 
to  those  that  will  listen.  The  substructure  gives  sta¬ 
bility  and  nerve  to  the  entire  superstructure  and  even 
to  the  architectural  delicacies  which  the  superstructure 
comprises.  Even  beauty  must  repose  upon  a  basis  of 
solidity  or  it  fails  of  being  beautiful. 

All  bodies  lying  upon  the  surface  of  the  ground  are 
held  fast  by  the  grip  of  gravity.  They  are  safe  where 
they  are  because  they  are  captives.  Captivity  is  the 
normal  condition  of  things  and  it  is  the  normal  condi¬ 
tion  of  man.  Adam’s  first  recorded  act  was  to  break 
with  God.  He  had  not  lived  long  enough  to  realize 
that  independence  is  not  the  genius  of  liberty,  and  that 
liberty  at  its  best  is  guaranteed  only  by  subordination. 
That  doctrine  is  luminously  conveyed  to  us  by  observ¬ 
ing  the  systematized  activity  of  the  starry  heavens,  the 
great  original  Bible;  and  the  same  doctrine  is  the 
burden  of  the  Hebrew  Scriptures. 

Against  that  doctrine,  and  the  authority  which  it 
represents,  man’s  nature  is  in  constitutional  revolt.  A 
man  is  as  reluctant  to  obey  God  as  a  child  is  reluctant 
to  obey  its  father.  So  long  as  that  condition  continues 
we  cannot  cease  printing  the  Old  Testament,  nor  dis¬ 
continue  fashioning  our  character  into  conformity  with 
its  obligations. 

This  is  in  part  the  reason  for  the  Old  Testa- 


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merit’s  unpopularity.  It  would  prove  a  wonderfully 
interesting  and  fascinating  volume  did  it  not  so  con¬ 
stantly  trespass  upon  the  domains  of  individual 
autonomy.  We  are  jealous  of  God  because  his  pre¬ 
possession  of  Godhood  compels  us  to  kneel  instead  of 
allowing  us  to  be  enthroned.  We  are  chafed  by  what 
we  are  pleased  to  consider  the  contractedness  of  our 
situation.  We  are  irked  by  the  indisputable  fact  that 
there  is  room  in  the  universe  for  only  One  Supreme. 
Like  wild  animals  we  pluck  at  the  bars  of  our  cage. 
All  of  which  is  our  various  way  of  expressing  our 
natural  aversion  to  being  controlled  by  any  will  but  our 
own, — a  situation  that  is  made  more  trying  by  the  fact 
that  the  will  is  among  the  most  conspicuous  elements 
of  our  nature  and  the  one  in  which  our  ingrained  mili¬ 
tancy  is  particularly  concentrated.  It  has  to  be  allowed 
that  the  condition  in  which  we  find  ourselves  is  not  an 
easy  one.  The  Lord  knows  it  is  not.  We  are  possessed 
of  a  simply  magnificent  will-power  but  are  severely 
restricted  in  our  use  of  it.  The  possession  of  will  en¬ 
dows  us  with  a  kind  of  magistracy,  but  a  magistracy 
which,  like  the  judgeship  of  an  inferior  court,  can  exer¬ 
cise  itself  only  within  a  restricted  range. 

Law  precedes  Gospel  in  the  education  of  the  race, 
and  as  naturally  in  the  education  of  the  individual.  If 
it  is  claimed  that  obedience  will  easily  follow  as  the 
fruit  of  affection  while  will  remains  obstinate  unless 
softened  by  affection,  there  is  this  immediate  reply, 
that  law  has  its  own  independent  claims  quite  apart 
from  every  other  consideration.  Obedience  is  the  great 
basal  feature  of  character  and  is  not  to  be  relegated 


156  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


to  a  second  place  by  being  brought  in  in  the  wake  of 
some  other  feature.  Obedience  is  an  original  premise, 
not  the  conclusion  derived  from  a  syllogism.  A  system 
of  law  constitutes  the  framework  along  whose  perpen¬ 
dicular  and  horizontal  lines  the  entire  fabric  of  ma¬ 
terial  and  immaterial  things  is  constructed.  Disregard 
of  that  fact  is  the  secret  of  all  the  confusion  and  con¬ 
flict  that  compose  the  history  of  the  world  and  of  every 
individual  in  it.  It  is  the  sum  and  substance  of  every¬ 
thing  that  we  call  sin. 

Were  every  law  obeyed,  were  every  prayer,  that 
God’s  will  may  be  done,  respected  even  by  those  who 
offer  the  prayer,  a  very  considerable  amount  of  the 
world’s  friction  would  be  already  eliminated.  Failure 
to  accept  a  Will  other  than  our  own  and  above  our 
own,  is  what  prevents  the  machinery  of  the  human 
world  from  running  with  the  frictionless  harmony  of 
the  stellar  world.  There  are  no  collisions  in  the  sky 
because  every  star  does  what  it  was  divinely  intended 
to  do  and  describes  the  orbit  that  was  from  eternity 
appointed  for  it. 

Obedience  as  emphasized  and  celebrated  in  the  Old 
Testament  needs  to  stand  out  as  marking  a  personal 
attitude  distinct  from  all  other  relations  that  enter  into 
the  bearing  of  the  individual.  Until  it  is  viewed  in 
its  own  distinctive  character,  and  appreciated  in  its 
own  immense  import,  combining  it  with  other  features 
of  personality,  however  excellent  in  themselves,  will 
have  the  same  confused  effect  as  would  the  attempt  to 
carry  along  at  the  same  time  the  laying  of  the  founda¬ 
tion  of  a  building  and  the  construction  of  what  is  to 


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be  placed  upon  it.  That  was  made  more  distinct  to  the 
young  people  fifty  years  ago  than  it  is  now.  In  dealing 
with  them  the  entire  matter  was  made  to  hinge  upon 
the  narrow  but  vital  question  as  to  whether  they  were 
going  to  be  God’s  man  or  their  own  man,  whether  they 
were  going  to  give  their  heart  to  God  or  to  keep  it. 
In  other  words  it  was  a  distinct  question  of  surrender. 
No  person  of  any  maturity  whether  young  or  old  fails 
to  appreciate  the  sharpness  of  the  distinction  between 
the  two  alternatives,  and  that  sharpness  of  distinction 
becomes  most  clear  when  held  most  apart  from  every 
side  consideration  of  either  love  or  penalty. 

I  had  a  young  man  in  my  first  parish  that  I  felt 
would  make  a  great  Christian  if  he  could  be  brought  to 
the  point  of  self -surrender.  He  was  such  sort  of  per¬ 
son  that  many  who  have  never  dealt  with  themselves 
analytically  would  have  said  that  he  was  quite  well  as 
he  was.  I  asked  him  to  call  upon  me  with  reference 
to  uniting  with  the  church.  He  replied  that  he  had  no 
interest  in  the  church.  Nevertheless  I  prevailed  upon 
him  to  call.  I  talked  with  him  frankly  and  gently 
pressed  upon  him  the  obligation  to  put  himself  in 
obedient  relations  to  God.  He  granted  the  propriety 
of  such  an  act  but  said:  “I  cannot  bend.  I  never  have 
and  I  cannot  do  so  now.”  I  suggested  that  we  kneel 
together  and  seek  God’s  aid.  “That  would  be  bending 
and  I  am  not  going  to  bend.”  I  said  nothing  about 
the  love  of  God  and  nothing  about  the  peril  of  going 
through  life  impenitent.  I  wanted  that  his  thought 
should  continue  to  rest  just  where  I  knew  it  was  rest¬ 
ing,  on  the  single  point  that  his  relation  to  God  carried 


158  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


in  it  an  inevitable  obligation;  that  he  belonged  to  God 
whether  he  acknowledged  it  or  not,  that  laws  existed 
for  the  purpose  of  being  obeyed,  and  that  if  he  disre¬ 
garded  such  laws  he  was  an  outlaw.  These  matters 
are  so  serious  that  they  need  to  be  presented  with  ut¬ 
most  clarity,  and  the  inevitableness  of  moral  obligation 
placed  on  its  own  grounds  unmixed  with  considerations 
that  lie  off  from  the  main  point.  It  is  pleasant  to  be 
able  to  add  that  within  two  weeks  he  yielded  uncon¬ 
ditionally. 

Standing  in  an  external  relation  to  God’s  universal 
kingdom  and  then  coming  from  that  to  an  internal 
relation,  is  as  definite  and  practical  a  movement  as 
changing  one’s  citizenship  from  Italy  to  the  United 
States  or,  which  is  a  better  illustration,  withdrawing 
from  the  fellowship  of  the  criminal  classes  and  becom¬ 
ing  a  faithful  subject  of  government.  There  is  nothing 
peculiarly  mysterious  about  it.  It  waits  on  the  delib¬ 
erate  action  of  human  mind  and  will.  It  is  simply  a 
question  to  decide.  No  special  play  of  emotion  is  called 
for.  Tears  only  complicate  the  situation,  for  they 
saturate  the  mechanism  of  thought,  which  runs  more 
accurately  when  dry.  Undisciplined  passion  is  nor¬ 
mally  attended  by  a  reactionary  chill,  and  what  such 
passion  will  produce,  such  chill  can  be  expected  to 
consume. 

God,  considered  as  sovereign  in  his  kingdom,  with  a 
will  that  imposes  itself  upon  everything  within  the 
compass  of  that  kingdom,  is  expressed,  but  less  def¬ 
initely,  in  the  New  Testament.  Christ  is  the  revelation 
of  God’s  love,  but  one  will  never  bring  away  from  the 


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Gospel  such  sense  of  God  in  the  kingliness  of  his  char¬ 
acter,  in  the  limitless  breadth  of  his  realm,  in  the 
awfulness  of  his  sovereignty  and  in  the  solemn  direct¬ 
ness  with  which  that  sovereignty  touches  down  upon 
every  object  material  or  human  within  the  scope  of 
that  kingdom,  as  discloses  itself  in  the  Old  Bible  of 
the  Hebrews. 

It  is  the  lack  of  an  overmastering  sense  of  the  abso¬ 
lute  Deity,  considered  as  an  immediate  reality,  that  in 
part,  at  any  rate,  explains  the  decrepitude  and  the  in¬ 
validism  of  much  of  what  passes  as  current  religion. 
It  accounts  for  the  reign  of  the  spirit  of  worldliness 
that  distinguishes  hosts  of  people  who  will  periodically 
celebrate  the  sacrament  of  God’s  love,  but  who,  between 
two  successive  celebrations,  are  undistinguishable  from 
the  general  mass  of  those  who  are  victims  of  “the  lust 
of  the  flesh,  the  lust  of  the  eye  and  the  pride  of  life.” 

The  foregoing  paragraph  is  in  no  wise  intended  as 
preachment.  It  is  only  adduced  in  justification  of  my 
proposition,  that  it  requires  Old  Testament  as  well  as 
New  to  constitute  our  Bible,  and  that  the  New,  taken 
apart  from  the  Old,  gives  us  but  a  part  of  God,  and  is 
an  instance  of  superstructure  reared  without  regard 
to  preliminary  substructure.  The  exception  which  is 
taken  to  the  sterner  and  more  serious  aspect  of  Bible 
truth  is  a  confession  of  willingness  to  take  up  with  an 
imperfect  religion  if  it  can  be  had  at  less  personal 
expense. 

The  serious  purpose  which  the  pulpit  is  assumed  to 
subserve  renders  important  a  clear  and  just  under¬ 
standing  of  what  constitutes 


160  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


3. 

FITNESS  FOR  THE  MINISTRY 

As  the  church  is  the  organized  body  of  Christian  be¬ 
lievers,  and  the  ministry  the  recognized  representative 
of  the  church,  it  becomes  a  question  of  widely  practical 
concern  under  what  form  of  discipline  the  ministry 
can  best  become  equipped  for  service.  It  is  unneces¬ 
sary  to  say  that,  as  in  all  the  professions,  equipment  is 
to  be  determined  by  function.  Now  the  function  of  the 
ministry  is  prophecy,  understanding  by  prophecy  tak¬ 
ing  of  the  things  of  God  and  showing  them  to  men. 
There  is  involved  therefore  the  possession  by  the  min¬ 
ister  of  a  twofold  knowledge,  the  knowledge  of  God 
for  whom  he  speaks,  and  the  understanding  of  men  to 
whom  he  speaks.  So  far  the  matter  with  which  I  have 
now  to  deal  is  clear. 

Agnostic  tendencies  evidently  bar  a  man  from  the 
ministry.  He  is  also  barred  whose  only  knowledge  of 
God  is  borrowed  knowledge,  which,  accurately  speak¬ 
ing,  cannot  be  designated  as  knowledge  at  all.  Merely 
to  proclaim  some  one’s  else  religious  opinion  is  not  the 
office  of  a  prophet  and  will  not  accomplish  prophetic 
results.  Ahab  feared  Elijah  because  he  felt  that  he 
had  ground  for  believing  that  Elijah  was  in  the  Lord’s 
confidence.  To  stand  in  the  pulpit  and  to  be  experi¬ 
mentally  qualified  to  say  “Thus  saith  the  Lord”  is  one 
thing.  To  stand  there  and  be  able  to  go  no  further 
than  to  quote  some  one’s  else  prophetic  announcement 
is  a  distinct  thing,  and  between  the  two  there  is  no 
vital  connection. 


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Peter  was  constituted  a  prophet  by  being  able  to 
say, — ‘‘We  were  eye-witnesses  of  his  majesty.  His 
voice  which  came  from  heaven  we  heard  when  we  were 
with  him  in  the  holy  mount.”  Judging  from  Scripture 
such  words  as  suppose,  conclude,  suspect,  imagine,  in¬ 
fer,  were  not  comprised  in  Apostolic  vocabulary.  The 
word  “know”  was  there  and  it  was  there  emphatically, 
and  is  thickly  scattered  through  the  entire  New  Testa¬ 
ment  narrative.  The  Bible  is  the  record  of  Hebrew 
experience  of  God.  Another  Bible,  or  a  second  edition 
of  the  New  Testament,  might  now  be  issued  that  should 
also  contain  a  history  of  Gentile  experience  of  God. 
And  its  issue  would  be  attended  with  this  advantage, 
that  certain  questioning  souls  would  be  persuaded  that 
Christianity  as  it  is  set  forth  in  our  present  Bible  is 
something  more  than  a  relic. 

Unless  we  are  prepared  to  sacrifice  the  profoundest 
significance  of  both  the  Old  and  New  Testaments,  we 
have  to  concede  that  while  in  all  the  history  therein 
recorded  there  may  have  been  only  one  scene  of  exactly 
the  character  of  the  one  referred  to  in  the  previous 
paragraph,  yet  the  instances  run  into  the  high  figures 
of  celestial  disclosures  where,  in  one  form  or  another, 
men  have  consciously  walked  upon  ground  made  bright 
by  a  heavenly  illumination  and  have  consciously  experi¬ 
enced  the  impulse  conveyed  by  the  entrance  into  them 
of  suggestions  borne  in  from  divine  sources.  And  it 
is  that  that  has  constituted  the  definiteness  of  their  pur¬ 
pose  and  the  stability  of  their  assurances. 

We  walk  by  faith,  but  not  by  an  unsupported  faith. 
In  no  range  of  life’s  experience  do  we  take  anything 


162  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


absolutely  on  trust.  Faith  is  a  producing  factor  only 
according  to  the  amount  of  knowledge  that  underlies 
it.  We  cannot  reasonably  believe  except  so  far  as  we 
have  grounds  for  our  belief.  Timothy  wrote  “Y  know 
whom  I  have  believed.”  And  so  Christ  says, — “We 
speak  that  we  do  know  and  testify  that  we  have  seen.” 
And  only  by  that  token  was  he  able  to  maintain  a  career 
in  which  there  was  no  misgiving,  no  fluctuations  of 
feeling  or  thought;  or  able  so  to  impress  himself  upon 
those  with  whom  he  dealt  as  to  lay  the  foundations  of 
a  Christian  history. 

With  very  special  pertinency  does  this  apply  to  a 
prophetic  ministry.  Moses  could  maintain  himself  in 
steadiness  of  demeanor  and  of  action  in  the  midst  of 
all  the  antagonisms  and  embarrassments  of  his  cap¬ 
taincy  of  the  Hebrew  people,  and  he  could  maintain 
himself  there  for  forty  years,  because  for  forty  days, — 
one  day  for  each  year, — he  had  tarried  with  God  in 
the  heights.  Stability  cannot  be  extemporized,  but  re¬ 
quires  to  have  something  beneath  it  to  make  it  stable. 
Elisha  in  the  troublous  times  of  King  Ahab,  could  ad¬ 
dress  that  vicious  old  monarch  with  a  clarion  note  of 
prophetic  denunciation  because  he  could  say  to  Ahab, 
“As  the  Lord  God  of  Israel  liveth,  before  whom  I 
stand  ”  consciously  charged  with  the  secrets  of  the 
divine  mind  and  purpose;  consciously  commissioned  to 
an  authoritative  vicegerency. 

So  of  John  the  Baptist.  So  of  this  same  Peter,  un¬ 
stable  by  nature,  but  wrought  into  ruggedness  by  what 
had  dropped  into  his  soul  from  above,  his  eyes  still 
bright  with  the  light  that  years  before  had  glorified 


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the  holy  mount,  and,  as  he  tells  us,  with  the  divine  voice 
still  sounding  in  his  ears,  the  voice  that  he  had  himself 
heard,  and  whose  persuasion  was  with  him  irrefutable 
argument  clear  out  to  the  day  of  his  martyrdom.  St. 
Paul  also  tells  us  that  he  had  seen  a  great  light  while 
on  his  way  to  Damascus,  and  also  that  on  another 
occasion  he  was  caught  up  into  the  third  heaven  and 
listened  to  words  that  were  possible  to  be  heard  but 
impossible  for  him  to  utter.  Still  more  significant, 
and  more  pertinent  to  our  immediate  interest  is  his 
statement  that  it  was  by  personal  revelation  from  God 
that  was  conveyed  to  him  the  truth  which  he  was  com¬ 
missioned  to  publish  to  the  Gentile  world. 

As  no  man’s  preaching  ever  did  so  much  for  the 
world  as  Paul’s  preaching  and  as  the  material  of  his 
preaching  was  direct  quotation  from  the  mind  of  God, 
there  is  something  in  these  two  facts  taken  in  conjunc¬ 
tion  that  ought  to  lie  heavily  upon  the  minds  of  those 
everywhere  that  are  occupied  in  preparing  men  for  the 
ministry;  that  is  to  say  in  furnishing  the  church  with 
prophets  that  shall  take  of  the  things  of  God  and  show 
them  to  men. 

There  is  no  suggestion  of  hearsay  in  what  Paul  says. 
He  never  has  to  quote.  If  he  touches  upon  the  realities 
of  the  world  invisible  we  feel,  in  reading  him,  that  at 
the  very  moment  when  he  was  writing,  his  eye  was 
wide  open  to  the  realities  of  that  world,  and  sensitively 
filled  with  them.  It  never  occurs  to  us  that  he  was  do¬ 
ing  into  words  of  his  own  some  report  of  unseen  reali¬ 
ties  that  another  had  loaned  to  him  or  otherwise  made 
over  to  him.  His  own  impassioned  thought  touches  the 


164  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


object  it  describes,  the  truths  it  relates.  There  is  no 
suggestion  of  inference  in  what  he  declares.  He  does 
not  say  ‘This  is  true-major  premise, — and  that  is  true- 
minor  premise, — therefore  something  else  is  true.” 
There  are  with  him  no  therefores.  Realities  stand  out 
to  his  eye  in  their  own  light  in  the  light  of  God. 

Paul  tells  the  Galatians  that  the  Gospel  that  he 
preaches  to  them  is  not  something  that  he  learned  at 
school,  and  went  onto  the  platform  with  it  or  into  the 
pulpit  with  it. 

Now  whether  there  is  all  in  this  that  the  facts  as 
stated  by  Paul  would  seem  to  indicate,  others  can  judge 
as  well  as  I.  But  Paul  was  a  tremendous  preacher. 
The  effect  of  what  he  spoke  or  wrote  has  lasted  to  this 
day.  And  what  he  spoke  or  wrote  he  says  he  obtained 
first-hand  from  God,  and  also  that  he  kept  away  from 
the  pillars  of  the  church.  If  he  labored  under  an 
hallucination  as  to  the  source  of  his  doctrines,  that 
hallucination  so  far  forth  compromises  his  doctrines. 
If  there  was  no  hallucination  then  the  divine  mind  is 
definitely  and  openly  accessible;  and  in  a  purely  prac¬ 
tical  point  of  view  the  one  from  whom  Paul  acquired 
his  knowledge  of  truth,  and  by  whom  Moses  and  Peter 
and  the  rest  were  made  able  to  take  of  the  things  of 
God  and  show  them  to  man,  is  still  the  predominant 
means  of  successfully  equipping  for  the  exercises  of 
the  prophetic  function. 

It  would  seem  that  Seminary  professors  believe  that 
God  is  not  as  willing  to  disclose  his  mind  to  intending 
prophets  now  as  in  the  old  days;  that  the  only  way  in 
which  they  can  be  produced  now  is  by  replacing  divine 


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inspiration  by  advanced  scholarship,  and  that  intense 
human  thinking,  if  sufficiently  intense,  will  take  the 
place  of  God’s  revelation,  it  being  understood  however 
that  the  classroom  process  is  conducted  in  a  spiritual¬ 
ized  atmosphere. 

As  already  stated,  the  prophet  in  order  to  the  exer¬ 
cise  of  his  office,  must  be  possessed  of  a  two-fold 
knowledge,  knowledge  of  God  whom  he  speaks  for  and 
understanding  of  men  whom  he  speaks  to.  I  question 
if  advanced  scholarship  contributes  to  either  of  those 
two  results.  I  am  sure  that  protracted  study  tends  to 
alienate  the  student  from  people  and  to  discourage 
sympathy  with  them,  rather  than  to  draw  him  into  close 
and  effective  relations  with  them.  And  I  also  believe 
that  protracted  study  pursued  with  a  view  to  the  accu¬ 
mulation  of  knowledge  along  the  line  of  whatever 
science,  secular  or  religious,  does  not  induce  that  re¬ 
lation  on  the  part  of  the  student  to  either  God  or  man 
that  fosters  a  love  for  ministerial  service.  Some  years 
ago,  I  was  set  ruminating  upon  this  matter  by  what  was 
told  me  by  an  officer, — not  a  professor, — of  one  of 
our  representative  theological  seminaries.  He  went 
with  me  over  the  list  of  seminary  graduates  to  whom 
by  virtue  of  their  exceptional  scholarly  attainments, 
had  been  accorded  the  privilege  of  two  years  of  gra¬ 
tuitous  study  abroad.  Although  they  had  entered  the 
seminary  with  the  intention  of  becoming  preachers, 
only  a  very  limited  percentage  of  them  entered  upon 
ministerial  service  upon  their  return. 

Now  I  perfectly  understand  from  my  own  experi¬ 
ence  the  psychology  of  the  fact  thus  stated.  I  know 


166  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


that  President  Seelye  of  Amherst,  as  related  on  another 
page,  simply  thrust  me  into  the  ministry  for  the  pur¬ 
pose  of  undoing  the  drying  and  unsocializing  effects 
of  study  that  was  being  prolonged  with  a  view  to  ag¬ 
grandizing  my  intellectual  possessions.  The  passion  for 
knowledge  grows  with  the  accumulation  of  knowledge, 
just  as  the  money  passion  grows  with  the  accumulation 
of  money;  and  one  passion  equally  with  the  other,  can 
separate  a  man  from  God  and  from  one’s  own  fellows 
with  both  of  whom  one  needs  to  stand  in  the  very 
closest  sympathetic  relation  in  order  to  be  a  prophet. 

I  write  this  although  knowing  that  many  seminaries 
are  giving  extended  courses  with  a  view  to  granting 
the  Ph.D.,  but  I  also  know  that  a  great  many  of  our 
brightest  University  and  Seminary  graduates  are  not 
in  our  pulpits.  We  know  that  Paul  sat  at  the  feet  of 
Gamaliel,  but  that  was  prior  to  his  call  to  the  ministry. 

The  idea  expressed  by  the  word  “Theology”  should 
never  be  contemplated  with  a  critical  spirit,  any  more 
than  what  is  denoted  by  such  terms  as  Astronomy  and 
Geology.  Theology  is  a  science  and  like  all  science  is 
worthy  of  intellectual  respect.  The  proper  application 
of  the  word  I  have  tried  to  indicate  in  what  I  here  say 
about 

4. 

THE  STUDY  OF  THEOLOGY 

I  studied  very  little  theology  before  I  commenced 
preaching,  and  what  I  have  since  acquired  has  come 
less  from  consulting  prescribed  text-books  than  from 
my  study  of  the  Bible  and  from  my  attempt  to  match 


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Bibl^truth  to  human  necessities.  St.  Paul  set  an  ex¬ 
ample  in  that  matter  and  the  large  place  which  he  has 
filled  in  ecclesiastical  life  and  activity  seemed  to  render 
his  example  one  that  it  would  be  prudent  to  follow. 
I  think  I  have  been  able  to  do  better  work  by  preaching 
truth  as  I  personally  experienced  it  than  by  preaching 
it  as  I  have  learned  that  some  one  else  has  experienced 
it.  Preaching  should  be  colored  by  the  personality  of 
the  preacher.  That  was  the  case  with  all  the  thinking 
and  speaking  that  is  recorded  in  Scripture. 

The  unsystematized  character  of  what  I  venture  to 
call  my  theology  has  sometimes  placed  me  in  an  awk¬ 
ward  position,  when  on  three  occasions  I  have  been 
subjected  to  the  ordeal  of  a  theological  examination. 
Otherwise  I  have  gotten  along  quite  comfortably  and 
with  a  measure  of  success.  I  inherited  a  strain  of 
conservatism  from  my  father  and  that  inheritance  has 
stood  me  in  good  stead  in  preventing  my  deviation  from 
lines  of  orthodoxy  and  from  becoming  offensively 
heretical. 

So  long  as  I  was  in  the  Congregational  Church  it  was 
plain  sailing,  for  in  that  body  each  church  is  a  law  to 
itself:  so  that  if  I  was  in  doctrinal  peace  with  my  own 
people  (which  was  not  difficult)  there  was  nothing  to 
be  feared  from  any  other  source.  In  so  Presbyterial 
a  place  as  New  York  City  a  preacher  encounters  a 
somewhat  different  atmosphere  although  the  church 
which  I  served  there  was  so  infected  (to  use  the  term 
sometimes  applied  to  us)  with  Congregationalism  that 
my  pulpit  was  as  free  as  my  previous  one. 

In  the  meantime  there  has  been,  I  should  say,  re- 


168  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


laxation  from  dogmatic  strenuousness  that  has  brought 
Presbyterianism  pretty  nearly  to  a  level  with  Congre¬ 
gationalism,  except  in  the  matter  of  church  govern¬ 
ment.  Which  is  to  claim  that  the  Presbyterian  pulpit 
in  New  York  City  has  become  more  religious  and  less 
dogmatic. 

It  needs  to  be  understood  that  a  man’s  theology  is 
no  criterion  of  his  piety.  Theology  is  religion  reduced 
to  a  form  of  thought.  It  is  the  science  of  divine  things 
and  no  more  brings  a  man  to  God  than  the  science  of 
astronomy  carries  a  man  to  the  stars.  It  is  significant 
that  there  are  many  students  who  have  entered  a  theo¬ 
logical  seminary  with  a  view  to  becoming  preachers 
of  the  Gospel  but  who,  upon  graduating,  have  adopted 
another  line  of  service. 

Too  much,  however,  cannot  be  said  in  behalf  of 
theological  study  considered  as  means  of  intellectual 
gymnastics.  A  thorough  course  of  Westminster  As¬ 
sembly’s  Shorter  Catechism  is  worth  more  than  so  much 
Greek  or  Calculus  considered  as  mental  training.  We 
are  told  that  Rufus  Choate  employed  it  in  the  discipline 
of  his  law  students.  I  remember  the  time  when  I  could 
ask  and  answer,  without  a  book,  its  hundred  and  more 
questions.  It  engages  the  mind  with  immense  problems. 
It  puts  tremendous  strain  upon  the  faculty  of  thought 
and  reason.  But  it  does  not  constitute  piety.  It  is  no 
synonym  with  religious  experience.  There  is  nothing 
to  indicate  that  it  made  Choate’s  law  students  more 
godly  or  that  he  used  the  catechism  with  them  for  that 
purpose. 

While  theology  does  not  produce  godliness,  godli- 


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169 


ness  produces  the  best  kind  of  theology.  The  text  for 
that  is,  “The  secret  of  the  Lord  is  with  them  that  fear 
Him” ;  the  knowledge  of  God  the  product  of  holy  loy¬ 
alty.  The  late  Horace  Bushnell  was  a  good  man,  but 
he  had  in  his  congregation  a  man  a  good  deal  holier 
than  he  in  the  shape  of  an  old  cobbler,  to  whom  he 
resorted  for  the  solution  of  puzzling  biblical  problems. 
The  proverb  is  a  familiar  one  that  “to  have  prayed  well 
is  to  have  studied  well.”  The  proverb  cannot  be  re¬ 
versed  so  as  to  read,  “to  have  studied  well  is  to  have 
prayed  well.”  I  have  seen  students  that  I  knew  studied 
well  but  in  all  likelihood  never  prayed  at  all. 

Why  do  we  reduce  our  theological  estimates  to  the 
form  of  a  written  creed?  Principally,  I  think,  because 
we  hold  them  with  so  loose  a  tenure — many  of  them — 
that  we  require  some  objective  expression  of  them  to 
keep  them  from  getting  away  from  us.  That  they 
require  such  reenforcement  is  unpleasantly  suggestive. 
If  they  mean  so  little  to  us  that  we  need  some  system 
of  mnemonics  to  keep  them  in  mind  they  certainly  do 
not  mean  enough  to  us  to  exert  upon  our  character  and 
life  that  influence  which  alone  possesses  a  doctrine  with 
practical  value.  We  never  make  our  home  or  our 
father  or  mother  subject  of  credal  statement.  What 
we  think  of  them  is  so  intimately  an  element  of  our 
experience  that  no  auxiliary  reminder  is  required. 

It  appears  to  me,  also,  that  the  habitual  introduction 
into  a  devotional  service  of  a  concerted  repetition  of  a 
written  creed  approaches  very  near  to  the  comical.  An 
approximate  parallel  to  which  would  be,  for  four  little 
children  to  compose  the  ideas  they  entertain  of  their 


170  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


father  and  mother  and  by  the  weekly  or  monthly  con¬ 
certed  recitation  of  those  ideas  in  the  parental  presence 
to  testify  to  their  filial  devotion.  If  my  connection  had 
been  with  churches  where  the  ritualistic  features  of 
worship  had  been  in  vogue  I  might  be  differently  im¬ 
pressed,  or  if  upon  my  occasional  attendance  upon  such 
services  the  ritualistic  features  had  not  been  rendered 
in  a  way  more  suggestive  of  the  habitual  than  of  the 
devotional.  Perhaps  it  is  all  explained  by  my  not  hav¬ 
ing  had  cultivated  in  me  a  ritualistic  appreciation. 

One  point  more.  The  soundness  of  one’s  creed  can¬ 
not  be  taken  as  measure  of  the  soundness  of  one’s  piety. 
We  have  it  intimated  in  Scripture  that  even  the  devils 
are  sound  believers.  The  value  of  any  article  of  one’s 
faith  is  proportioned  only  to  the  weight  of  practical 
influence  exerted  by  that  article.  If,  for  example,  I 
say  I  believe  in  the  immortality  of  the  soul,  and  yet  live 
as  though  the  life  here  were  the  only  life,  I  thereby 
convict  myself  of  being  an  unbeliever  in  the  doctrine, 
even  though  it  be  written  in  my  scheme  of  faith  and 
I  every  day  repeat  the  Apostles’  Creed  in  which  that 
doctrine  is  stated.  Much  of  the  emphasis  laid  upon 
creed  should  be  shifted  and  laid  upon  experience.  The 
man  himself  is  his  only  title  to  a  place  among  the  saints. 
One  defect  in  universal  need  of  being  corrected  is  that 
of  estimating  character  by  fictitious  criteria. 


When  we  return  to  the  original  simplicity  of  the 
Church,  we  shall  in  several  respects  modify  existing 
forms  and  methods.  For  example,  we  shall  then  lay 
more  stress  upon  truth  and  less  upon  the  forms  of 


REFLECTIONS 


171 


truth.  We  shall  feel  our  immediate  relation  to  every 
one  bearing  the  name  of  Christ,  whoever  and  wherever 
he  may  be,  as  is  already  the  case  inside  of  the  Roman 
Catholic  Church;  thus  producing  a  sense  of  Christian 
unity  quite  impossible  so  long  as  we  adhere  to  the  un- 
apostolic  feature  of 

5. 

DENOMINATIONALISM 

If  the  Church  is  to  accomplish  its  divinely  appointed 
task  of  securing  the  refinement  and  general  uplift  of 
society  and  the  State — in  other  words,  achieving  the 
control  of  the  world  and  of  human  history — it  will  re¬ 
quire  to  substitute  affirmation  for  negation,  to  put 
spirituality  before  intellectuality,  to  throw  off  every 
obstruction  and  burden  that  tends  to  embarrass  its 
activity,  and  when  it  does  the  latter  it  will  proceed  to 
rid  itself  of  denominationalism. 

Denominationalism  is  a  divisive  emphasis  laid  upon 
matters  that  are  alien  to  the  genius  of  the  Church.  By 
burdening  the  Church  it  retards  its  progress,  compli¬ 
cating  it  with  interests  that  are  foreign  to  churchly 
nature  and  purposes.  It  is  going  into  battle — for  the 
Church  is  the  Lord’s  army — with  each  soldier  carrying 
in  his  pack — already  pretty  heavy — some  article  that 
has  no  relation  to  the  transactions  of  the  battle-field. 

Denominationalism  has  been  for  so  long  a  time  an 
established  feature  of  church  existence  that  it  has  come 
to  be  regarded  as  a  necessary  element,  although  it  is 
always  accepted  as  special  evidence  of  the  working  of 
God’s  spirit  when  two  churches,  differing  denomina- 


172  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


tionally,  merge  themselves  in  a  single  body;  and  al¬ 
though  a  denomination  which  is  reluctant  so  to  merge 
itself  with  other  denominations  may  be  quite  ready 
and  deeply  concerned  to  have  other  denominations 
merge  themselves  with  it.  All  of  which  is  a  sly  indica¬ 
tion  that  in  matters  as  serious  as  the  one  we  are  now 
considering  we  can  commend  and  advertise  one  princi¬ 
ple  while  living  by  another. 

As  early  as  the  lifetime  of  St.  Paul  the  Christians 
were  seized  by  a  passion  for  divisive  organization. 
Organizing  an  idea  tends  to  create  a  draft  upon  its 
vitality  and  tends  to  the  multiplication  of  machinery 
at  the  expense  of  efficiency.  Mechanics  is  wiser  than 
ecclesiasticism  and  proceeds  upon  the  theory  of  a  mini¬ 
mum  of  machinery  in  order  to  a  maximum  of  available 
power. 

It  is  related  in  a  recent  issue  of  one  of  our  maga¬ 
zines  that  a  certain  scheme  having  been  devised  that 
promised  to  prove  to  the  advantage  of  mankind,  it  was 
laid  before  the  devil  with  a  view  to  obtaining  his  judg¬ 
ment  upon  it.  The  devil  appreciated  its  possibilities  of 
public  advantage,  and  in  evident  disturbance  of  mind 
inquired  what  was  to  be  done  with  it ;  and  was  told  that 
it  was  to  be  organized.  He  smiled  a  sly  devilish  smile 
and  said,  “Then  I’ll  not  worry  about  it.” 

What  St.  Paul  writes  to  the  church  at  Corinth  indi¬ 
cates  that  already  cleavage  lines  were  developing  in 
the  compact  body  of  the  church  and  that  already  three 
denominations  were  in  process  of  organization,  a  con¬ 
dition  to  which  he  administered  a  sharp  rebuke,  basing 
it  on  the  principle  that  the  interpolation  of  an  inter- 


REFLECTIONS 


173 


mediary  between  a  body  of  Christians  and  their  Lord 
operates  to  obscure  and  enfeeble  the  directness  of  their 
relation  to  their  Lord. 

That  was  good  philosophy  then  and  it  is  the  same 
now.  And  whether  it  be  a  human  being  that  is  thus 
interpolated,  as  was  the  case  then,  or  some  human  idea, 
fancy  or  preference,  the  result  is  the  same.  And  the 
closer  a  man  comes  to  Christ  the  less  he  cares  for  his 
Presbyterianism,  his  Methodism  or  his  Episcopacy. 

Even  the  Baptist  Church,  which  has  been  one  of  the 
most  conservative  in  that  respect,  shows  symptoms  of 
the  working  of  a  broadening  impulse.  I  recently  ad¬ 
ministered  the  communion  service  in  a  Baptist  church 
and  received  new  members.  And  although  that  body 
of  believers  is  just  now  making  a  minority  effort  to 
originate  a  new  denomination,  yet  the  attempt  to  do 
what  is  distinctly  an  anachronism  is  exerting  a  liber¬ 
alizing  influence  on  the  majority  of  that  body  and  will 
certainly  quicken  the  undenominational  tendency  of 
all  the  other  Protestant  sects. 

The  tendency  away  from  sectarianism  has  as  its  com¬ 
pelling  motive  two  considerations.  One  is  that  Christ, 
the  undivided  head  of  the  church,  logically  implies  and 
demands  the  undivided  body  of  the  church.  The  other 
is  that  to  be  a  militant  church — that  is  to  say,  the  Lord’s 
army — is  inconsistent  with  the  mutual  isolation  and 
competition  of  its  component  elements.  In  a  little  town 
or  even  in  a  sizable  town,  to  have  three  or  four 
churches,  each  of  which  regards  the  other  more  or  less 
askance,  is  false  to  the  army  idea,  prejudicial  to  all 
militant  results  and  more  repellent  than  attractive  to 


174  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


the  unchurched  masses.  That  the  Roman  Catholic 
Church  is  one  church  the  world  over  is  one  of  the  con¬ 
tributing  elements  of  its  attractiveness  and  power. 

Only  so  fast  as  we  free  ourselves  from  all  obstruc¬ 
tions  and  return  to  the  original  simplicity  of  the  Apos¬ 
tolic  church  can  we  fully  actualize  the  church  in  its 
character  of  organized  divine  efficiency,  confronting 
the  world  with  its  holy  challenge,  created  of  God  for 
the  spiritual  conquest  of  the  world,  for  the  reduction, 
to  the  obedience  of  God,  of  all  human  tendencies  of 
every  kind,  individual,  social,  national  and  interna¬ 
tional.  That  is  what  the  Church  is  for,  the  establish¬ 
ment  on  earth  of  the  kingdom  of  God;  not  merely  the 
rescue  of  a  few  individuals,  but  the  sanctification  of 
the  very  framework  of  society  and  making  holy  all  its 
administrative  machinery. 

To  treat  one’s  entrance  into  the  visible  Church  as 
though  it  were  an  ultimate  achievement,  a  satisfactory 
finality  in  the  Christian  life  of  the  individual,  is  to  pro¬ 
ceed  on  the  basis  of  a  serious  misconception,  a  mis¬ 
conception  rather  generally  entertained  and  on  that  ac¬ 
count  more  harmful.  Hence  the  following  paragraphs 
devoted  to  the  matter  of 


6. 

THE  CHURCH  MILITANT 

Considered  in  its  militant  character,  the  individual 
church  is  first  of  all  a  recruiting  station  for  gathering 
in  raw  material  and  fitting  and  equipping  it  for  the 
ranks  and  for  service  in  the  ranks. 


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That  is  merely  preliminary.  We  are  annually  treated 
to  a  publication  of  the  number  of  recruits  that  have 
been  brought  into  the  church  during  the  year,  with  the 
intention  that  the  figures  shall  be  taken  as  exponent  of 
what  the  churches  have  respectively  been  worth  as 
church  organizations. 

That  would  be  like  using  the  number  of  recruits  that 
have  been  taken  into  the  United  States  Army  during 
the  year  as  measure  of  the  army’s  military  achievements 
during  the  year.  It  is  an  accommodation  to  the  widely 
prevalent  idea  that  men  are  recruited  to  the  church,  that 
is  to  say,  converted,  that  they  may  become  approved 
candidates  for  the  felicities  of  the  world  celestial,  ter¬ 
restrially  remodeled  in  order  to  be  celestially  remuner¬ 
ated  ;  like  the  child  whose  mother  procures  his  obedience 
by  paying  him  for  it.  In  both  cases  goodness  becomes 
simply  a  market  commodity  alongside  of  grain  and 
comestibles;  and  because  of  that  conception  the  mili¬ 
tant  function  of  the  church  is  shunted  on  to  a  side 
track.  These  fresh  converts,  these  recruits,  are  not 
to  be  considered  as  converted  that  they  may  be  ready 
to  die,  but  in  order  that  they  may  be  ready  to  live,  to 
enter  the  Lord’s  army  and  help  fight  its  battles. 

The  world  has  little  or  no  respect  for  the  church 
considered  as  an  institution  organized  for  conflict  with 
the  world  power,  and  for  the  very  good  reason  that 
the  church  has  little  respect  for  itself  in  that  capacity. 
The  world  not  only  wants  nothing  from  the  church  and, 
more  than  that,  it  expects  nothing,  does  not  conceive 
of  it  as  a  force  set  for  the  shaping  of  event;  for  the 
determination  of  history,  for  the  mastering  of  secular 


176  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


purpose  and  activity;  for  the  definite  correction  of 
what  is  evil  and  the  staying  of  influences  that  make 
for  social  and  political  corruption.  The  world’s  con¬ 
ception  of  the  church  is  that  it  exists  for  the  sake  of 
building  itself  up,  like  an  aimless  boy  that  has  no  other 
purpose  for  himself  except  to  feed  himself  in  order 
that  he  may  grow. 

Quite  different  is  the  popular  attitude  of  mind  to¬ 
ward  our  state  militia  and  our  federal  army.  In  the 
first  place,  they  respect  themselves  in  their  capacity  as 
an  army,  and  as  organized  not  for  purposes  of  self- 
advertisement  and  self-felicitation,  but  as  organized 
for  direct  and  practical  conflict  against  revolt  or  in¬ 
vasion. 

When  we  observe  them  on  parade  we  cherish  for 
them  and  for  their  officers  a  peculiar  respect  mount¬ 
ing  to  reverence,  begotten  of  the  fact  that  they  are  not 
a  barren  and  aimless  exhibit,  an  organization  framed 
with  a  nebulous  design,  a  design  so  nebulous  that  not 
one-tenth  of  the  onlookers  have  any  concrete  idea  of 
what  they  are  for,  but  understand  that  they  maintain 
the  most  direct  relation  to  the  non-military  population, 
and  that  it  may  at  any  time  be  said  of  them  that  they 
hold  the  destiny  of  the  country  in  their  hands;  and  as 
it  was  thought  and  said  a  few  years  ago,  that  they  hold 
modern  civilization  in  their  hands.  In  that  way  the 
federal  army  wins  a  meaning  that  strikes  the  intelli¬ 
gence  of  every  civilian  in  a  way  that  no  one  asks  what 
is  the  use  of  such  an  army  as  millions  of  people  are 
asking  what  is  the  use  of  that  other  army,  the  church. 
And  because  they  do  not  realize  the  use  of  it,  and  have 


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never  received  from  the  church  itself  an  adequate  ex¬ 
planation  of  its  use,  stand  off  from  it  and  deny  its 
proper  relation  to,  or  its  warranted  responsibility  for, 
the  secular  character  and  interests  of  the  world. 

There  are  two  things  which  need  to  be  understood 
and  emphasized.  One  is  that  the  world  needs  to  be 
improved.  The  other  is  that  it  is  not  going  to  improve 
itself.  A  man  cannot  pick  himself  out  of  a  hole.  And 
world  improvement  is  impossible  except  through  the 
exercise  of  an  agency  that  is  not  viciously  complicated 
with  the  interests  of  the  world. 

Whether  the  church  is  itself  altogether  free  from 
such  complication  is  not  the  question.  If  there  is  fault 
in  that  particular  it  will  have  to  be  charged  to  the  re¬ 
cruiting  agencies,  to  those  who  pass  upon  the  compe¬ 
tency  of  intending  soldiery,  who  perhaps  have  been 
constrained  to  enlist  under  the  pressure  of  some  pa¬ 
thetic  or  sensational  appeal,  which  makes  it  proper  to 
say  that  the  work  of  professional  evangelists  should 
be  scrutinized  and  reviewed  with  exceeding  care. 

However  that  may  be,  if  our  civilization  is  to  be 
saved,  the  only  organization  in  sight  available  for 
divine  use  is  the  church,  so  that  if  any  of  us  believe 
ourselves  to  be  in  the  legitimate  exercise  of  church 
membership  there  is  no  occasion  for  our  maintaining  a 
hesitant  attitude  toward  the  world’s  secular  tendencies 
so  far  as  they  are  tainted  tendencies;  alert  but  always 
discreet  in  the  way  in  which  we  militantly  move  upon 
those  tendencies ;  treating  such  service  not  as  an  option 
but  discharging  it  as  an  obligation.  Everything  that 


178  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


has  been  done  in  the  way  of  reclaiming  the  world  has 
been  done  by  inspired  soldiery. 

There  are  many  propositions  which  lie  before  the 
mind  unproved,  and  which  do  not  admit  of  absolute 
demonstration,  but  which  so  definitely  correspond  to 
an  ineffaceable  inner  impulse  that  we  accept  their  real¬ 
ity  even  without  proof.  One  of  these  is 

7. 

THE  DOCTRINE  OF  IMMORTALITY 

When  God  made  man  he  did  not  finish  him.  In  that 
there  is  nothing  inconsistent  with  general  policy.  It 
pertains  to  the  personal  and  the  material  world  alike. 
It  is  to  that  that  nature  owes  one  of  her  charms.  An 
acorn  is  an  oak  already,  but  an  uncompleted  one.  A 
little  boy  is  a  man  already,  but  not  yet  finished. 

It  is  not  to  be  supposed  that  Adam  and  Eve  began 
in  the  shape  in  which  we  meet  them  in  the  garden. 
The  situation  there  is  to  be  interpreted  by  the  known 
complexion  of  things  in  general;  by  what  nature  at 
large  has  to  say  about  it.  In  such  matters  it  has  to  be 
remembered  that  nature  came  from  God  as  well  as  the 
Bible.  Indeed,  nature  is  itself  a  Bible,  and  it  is  the 
great  original  Bible.  It  has  this  advantage,  that  there 
is  nothing  in  it  that  God  did  not  put  into  it,  whereas 
in  our  printed  copy  there  may  be  a  few  things  that 
man  put  there.  It  is  easy  to  assume  the  contrary  but 
impossible  to  prove  it. 

In  the  light  of  the  general  aspect  of  nature  we  may 
assume,  therefore,  that  what  we  call  our  first  parents 
were  no  exception  to  the  rule;  that  Adam  had  lived  a 


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179 


considerable  time  before  he  became  an  agriculturist, 
and  that  Eve  had  studied  some,  and  had  thought  con¬ 
siderable,  before  being  able  to  discuss  the  morality  or 
immorality  of  doing  what  was  forbidden. 

This  general  incomplete  condition  of  things  creates 
the  theater  in  which  growth  has  an  opportunity  to  play, 
which  is  quite  a  different  thing  from  manufacture.  This 
is  another  world  from  what  it  would  be  if  everything 
were  mineral  and  had  no  option  but  either  to  remain 
as  it  is  or  to  fall  to  pieces  in  decay.  Manufacture  puts 
things  together  from  the  outside:  growth  is  a  release 
from  the  inside.  It  is  the  unpacking  of  what  had  been 
previously  packed  in ;  divinely  packed  in,  we  suppose. 
And  the  longer  things  can  go  without  repacking  the 
more  wonderful  it  becomes  as  a  manifestation  of  divine 
wisdom  and  power:  exactly  as  a  clock  that  will  go  a 
year  without  rewinding  is  more  of  a  timepiece  than  one 
that  has  to  be  wound  every  week.  That  is  why  I  be¬ 
lieve  I  honor  God  by  believing  and  teaching  the  doc¬ 
trine  of  evolution. 

We  are  built  for  the  future.  We  wind  our  clock 
Sunday  morning  for  the  week.  We  wind  it  for  the 
future.  And  then  the  motion  of  its  hands  on  the  dial- 
plate  comes  from  the  use  of  the  force  which  we  have 
introduced  into  the  clock.  So  are  we  wound  for  the 
future.  *  We  are  equipped  with  a  prospect.  The  past 
we  can  turn  to  some  account  and  had  better  not  forget 
it,  at  least  not  all  of  it,  but  had  better  not  live  on  it. 
We  are  in  this  respect  like  a  boat,  in  that  our  build 
shows  in  what  direction  we  are  intended  to  go.  Life 
viewed  from  the  point  where  we  stand  at  this  moment 


180  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


lies  altogether  in  front  of  us.  It  is  a  big  adventure, 
bigger  than  the  one  that  Columbus  committed  himself 
to  when  he  loosed  from  Palos.  But  he  found  a  new 
continent. 

It  is  good  for  the  soul  to  take  counsel  with  the  un¬ 
known  years,  to  stand  so  close  to  the  unknown  as  to 
feel  it.  We  enlarge  to  the  scope  of  the  world  we 
contemplate.  Artisans  whose  work  requires  the  use 
of  a  microscope  become  nearsighted.  Ship  captains 
lengthen  their  vision  by  striving  to  resolve  land-haze 
into  firm  continent.  Everything  depends  on  the  soul’s 
attitude.  No  matter  how  old  a  man  is,  provided  his 
brain  still  functions  and  his  heart  still  beats,  he  dis¬ 
honors  God  and  his  unused  possibilities  if  he  fails  to 
continue  ticking  and  striking  every  time  the  hour  comes 
around.  We  shall  have  as  much  eternity  as  we  earn. 
Anyhow,  we  are  not  finished,  and  forgetting  the  things 
which  are  behind  we  will  look  forward  unto  the  things 
which  are  before,  for  “it  doth  not  yet  appear  what 
we  shall  be.” 

Even  if  we  cannot  prove  immortality,  it  is  wise  to 
assume  it.  We  cannot  prove  tomorrow;  we  only  as¬ 
sume  it,  and  the  assumption  improves  the  use  we  make 
of  today.  We  can  tell  how  old  a  tree  is  by  the  number 
of  its  successive  rings  of  deposit.  So  we  ought  to  be 
able  to  compute  a  man’s  age  less  by  consulting  the 
almanac  and  more  by  the  measure  of  his  acquisitions 
and  achievements.  A  man’s  age  when  he  dies  is  to  be 
determined  by  the  number  of  years  that  he  has  lived, 
not  by  the  number  that  he  has  existed. 

One’s  confidence  in  immortality  varies  with  the  in- 


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181 


dividual.  It  is  a  doctrine  at  which  very  many  falter 
even  though  they  confess  it  on  each  repetition  of  the 
Apostles’  Creed,  and  even  though  they  assert  their  ac¬ 
ceptance  of  the  divine  authority  of  the  Scriptures  in 
which  the  doctrine  is  definitely  affirmed.  But  believ¬ 
ing  the  Bible  in  general  is  not  quite  the  same  as  be¬ 
lieving  everything  that  there  is  in  it.  There  is  an  in¬ 
superable  difficulty  in  believing  something  that  we  are 
constitutionally  incompetent  to  appreciate;  in  grasping 
with  an  expectant  thought  something  which  outmeasures 
the  scope  of  our  thought;  just  as  we  cannot  embrace 
with  our  arms  anything  that  is  longer  than  our  arms. 
Believing  in  immortality  may  in  many  instances  mean 
simply  assenting  to  the  doctrine,  which  would  only  de¬ 
note  an  inclination  toward  it  rather  than  a  declination 
from  it. 

What  passes  as  belief  in  immortality  generally 
amounts  probably  to  nothing  more  than  to  a  belief  that 
death  does  not  end  all,  that  we  personally  survive  the 
grave,  without  being  consciously  committed  to  so  broad 
a  doctrine  as  that  we  shall  live  eternally,  and  that  there 
will  never  be  a  period  put  to  our  existence.  For  we 
can  think  as  far  as  to  the  grave  and  perhaps  to  the  time 
that  immediately  follows;  but  consciously  and  intelli¬ 
gently  to  stretch  our  thought  to  a  point  a  thousand  or 
a  million  years  further  transcends  our  power  and  we 
really  do  not  attempt  it.  If  we  can  pass  the  grave  un¬ 
scathed  we  surrender  ourselves  to  the  future  with  no 
careful  thought  as  to  the  extent  of  that  future  or  as  to 
the  extent  of  our  perdurance  in  that  future. 

Much  of  our  conviction  that  what  we  call  death  is 


182  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


not  fatal  proceeds  from  our  love  of  life.  We  in  part 
expect  to  continue  living  because  we  want  to  live.  To 
that  extent  the  wish  is  parent  to  the  thought.  The 
dearer  life  is  to  us  and  the  more  it  means  to  us,  by  so 
much  stronger  will  be  our  belief  in  immortality.  The 
rational  joy  one  finds  in  life  proves  how  natural  is  our 
adaptedness  to  life  and  easily  creates  the  presumption 
that  an  adaptedness  which  is  so  natural  will  be  indef¬ 
initely  continued. 

But  that  consideration  is  less  convincing  than  the 
apparently  preparatory  character  of  our  present  expe¬ 
rience.  To  whatever  extent  our  life  here  may  be  pro¬ 
longed  we  feel  that  we  are  only  begun,  not  finished. 
The  road  we  travel  is  too  short  to  enable  us  to  arrive. 
In  the  matter  of  knowledge,  whether  scientific  or  spir¬ 
itual,  we  have  only  commenced  to  know,  and  the  more 
we  know  the  clearer  our  conception  of  the  vast  amount 
still  remaining  to  be  known,  could  life  but  be  suffi¬ 
ciently  prolonged. 

The  result  is  that  we  feel  that  if  life  is  reduced  to  a 
limited  term  it  is  more  tantalizing  than  satisfying,  and 
would  better  have  been  withheld  from  us  altogether. 
Hardly  does  the  conception  of  God  that  we  are  taught 
by  our  religion  to  cherish  of  him  permit  us  to  suppose 
that  He  would  give  us  a  momentary  glimpse  of  a  mag¬ 
nificent  prospect  and  then  blind  our  eyes  to  the  contem¬ 
plation  of  it.  If  what  we  call  God’s  love  allows  our 
life  to  issue  in  a  final  and  eternal  disappointment,  can 
we  invest  that  love  with  those  qualities  of  fatherliness 
with  which  by  the  terms  of  the  Gospel  that  love  claims 
to  be  endowed  ? 


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183 


A  perfectly  satisfying  belief  in  immortality  includes 
not  only  the  conviction  that  we  are  not  yet  finished,  but 
also  that  we  never  shall  be. 

We  can  receive  no  communications  from  without 
which  do  not  address  themselves  to  what  is  already  to 
some  degree  instinctively  present  within  us.  We  are 
like  a  musical  instrument  which  can  render  no  tones 
except  those  that  already  lie  latently  in  the  strings.  It 
is  at  the  impulse  of  this  thought  that  I  have  composed 
the  following  article  on 

8. 

RELIGION 

Religion  has  to  do  with  God  and  man  in  their  rela¬ 
tion  to  each  other.  That  relation  becomes  a  reality 
in  human  experience  by  virtue  of  an  implanted  instinct. 
We  should  never  have  been  able  to  reason  except  as 
rationality  had  been  lodged  in  us  as  an  innate  possibility. 
In  a  similar  way  we  are  religious  by  nature.  Religion 
is  so  wonderful  a  thing,  so  tremendously  broad  and 
high  in  its  scope,  that  it  would  never  have  occurred  to 
us  to  come  to  it;  we  should  never  have  been  able  to 
come  to  it  had  not  its  beginning  been  started  in  us 
along  with  our  birth.  Therefore  if  there  are  any 
obligations  attached  to  it,  those  obligations  are  as  in¬ 
evitable  and  as  obligatory  as  is  the  power  and  oppor¬ 
tunity  of  vision  inevitable  to  an  illuminated  eye.  So 
that  for  any  man,  normally  constructed,  to  ignore  re¬ 
ligion  and  to  deny  the  existence  in  himself  of  religious 
tendency  and  impulse  is  to  play  false  with  his  own 
constitution  and  with  its  Author. 


184  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


That  furnishes  basis  for  the  entire  superstructure 
of  religious  truth  in  all  its  details.  If  those  who  preach 
would  keep  more  constantly  close  to  the  grand  funda¬ 
mentals  they  would  be  better  able  to  present  and  urge 
with  effect  all  those  specifications  which  derive  their 
meaning  and  their  authority  from  the  one  basal  fact 
that  God  is  and  that  we  stand  to  Him  in  personal  moral 
relation.  Once  let  a  child  become  thoroughly  and  pleas¬ 
antly  at  home  with  that  single  basal  idea  and  almost 
anything  that  lies  legitimately  in  the  range  of  religious 
truth  can  be  brought  to  his  unresisting  regard. 

Religion  has  been  brought  into  the  world  in  order 
to  save  men  to  themselves  and  to  redeem  our  civiliza¬ 
tion.  It  is  not  a  religion  of  retribution  but  of  recon¬ 
struction,  such  as  should  obviate  all  necessity  for  retri¬ 
bution.  Retribution  has  a  place  in  the  world,  but  it  is 
like  the  schoolmaster’s  ferule,  which  may  be  a  neces¬ 
sary  feature  of  schoolroom  furniture  but  is  most  use¬ 
ful  when  so  kept  under  cover  as  to  imply  the  hope  and 
expectation  that  there  will  be  no  occasion  for  its  appli¬ 
cation.  Its  application  is  the  last  resort  of  administra¬ 
tion  that  is  only  semi-successful. 

In  making  use  of  religion  as  a  means  of  individual 
and  social  redemption  we  ought  never  to  be  discon¬ 
certed  by  man’s  imperfect  condition.  A  physician  is 
always  expected  to  enter  the  sick  room  cheerily.  One 
who  labors  for  the  world’s  betterment  will  be  disap¬ 
pointed  in  his  achievements  if  his  appreciation  of  hu¬ 
man  condition  is  framed  in  the  minor  key.  Of  all  men 
the  one  who  desires  to  do  good  is  the  one  who  has  most 
need  of  a  glad  face.  I  am  far  from  believing  that  Jesus 


REFLECTIONS 


185 


was  the  hypochondriac  that  art  and  current  sentiment 
conceive  Him  to  have  been.  If  His  attitude  and  aspect 
had  shown  symptoms  of  such  depression  as  is  attrib¬ 
uted  to  Him,  he  could  hardly  have  attracted  to  Him¬ 
self  so  quickly  so  memorable  a  following.  Men  are 
not  drawn  together  under  the  attraction  of  that  kind 
of  magnetism.  Religion  is  a  boon,  not  a  catastrophe. 
If  one  is  in  any  kind  of  need  or  distress  and  I  can 
bring  him  relief,  I  do  not  approach  him  in  tears  or 
clad  in  the  habiliments  of  woe. 

To  develop  a  man’s  religious  impulses  and  to  do  it 
by  reminding  him  of  his  depravity,  of  which  he  is  more 
thoroughly  aware  than  any  one  else  can  be,  seems  to 
be  a  less  effective  way  of  dealing  than  by  cultivating 
in  him  a  sense  of  his  magnificent  possibilities. 

Overcoming  the  evil  with  the  good  is  a  principle  that 
Scripture  commends,  and  is  a  more  philosophic  expe¬ 
dient  than  to  leave  the  good  in  the  background  and  to 
put  the  main  emphasis  on  the  evil  and  on  the  retribu¬ 
tion  to  which  the  evil  is  liable.  Man  is  by  native  en¬ 
dowment  so  different  from  a  dog  that  he  ought  not  to 
be  treated  as  though  he  were  a  dog. 

Moral  beauty  is  not  made  attractive  by  methods  of 
enforcement  against  which  the  better  elements  of  a 
man’s  nature  instinctively  revolt.  The  evil  there  is 
in  what  is  bad  is  not  made  visible  by  being  shown  in 
its  own  light,  for  there  is  in  it  no  light.  In  order  to 
realize  that  black  is  black  it  needs  to  be  put  in  juxta¬ 
position  with  what  is  white.  The  doctrine  of  relativity, 
which  has  received  scientific  recognition,  has  its  place 
also  in  the  sphere  of  morals.  An  example  of  this  is 


186  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


our  Lord’s  dealing  with  the  morally  abject  Samaritan 
woman.  Instead  of  holding  her  to  her  past  and  making 
her  breathe  the  fetid  atmosphere  of  her  own  depravity, 
he  called  her  off  from  herself  and  led  her  thoughts 
along  the  most  exalted  lines  of  conception  and  spirit¬ 
ual  imagination  of  which  human  mind  and  heart  are 
capable.  It  was  a  divine  compliment  paid  to  her  fine 
religious  susceptibilities.  Moral  chastisement  would 
probably  have  resulted  in  the  continuance  of  her  career 
of  concubinage. 

Our  view  of  the  function  of  religion  will  depend  in 
part  upon  what  we  consider  to  be  man’s  quality  when 
first  he  comes  under  moral  influence;  or,  let  me  say, 
upon  what  we  consider  to  have  been  the  quality  of 
Adam — taken  as  representative  of  the  race — when  first 
he  came  under  moral  influence.  Adam  did  not  fall  in 
the  Garden  of  Eden.  Instead  of  its  being  a  fall  it  was 
an  early  step  taken  in  the  history  of  his  ascent.  A 
certain  amount  of  elevation  is  necessary  in  order  to 
render  fall  possible.  Adam  was  born  innocent,  as  we 
all  are.  But  innocence  is  purely  a  negative  quality.  It 
sustains  the  same  relation  to  character  that  white  paper 
does  to  the  writing  that  is  put  upon  it.  Adam  was 
neither  moral  nor  immoral,  but  unmoral.  In  the  char¬ 
acter  in  which  he  first  appears  in  the  Genesis  story  he 
was  still  a  baby  in  point  of  moral  appreciation:  and 
thrusting  him  out  of  Paradise  and  among  the  thorns 
and  thistles  was  the  providential  method  of  sending 
him  and  Eve  to  primary  school;  for  every  kind  of 
progress  has  to  be  gained  by  some  form  of  struggle: 


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and  Paradise  was  too  easy  a  place  to  live  in  to  afford 
any  incentives  to  progress. 

If  we  accept  the  theory  scientifically  adopted,  that 
the  human  race  had  already  been  for  innumerable  ages 
under  a  progressive  discipline,  by  which  man  primeval 
had  arrived  at  the  state  of  being  known  as  man  his¬ 
toric,  then  we  shall  have  to  regard  the  era  at  which 
the  Bible  takes  up  the  story  of  man  as  being  a  kind  of 
way-station  where  the  training,  by  which  he  had  been 
developed  into  a  perfect  animal,  was  replaced  by  a 
supplementary  training  whose  function  it  would  be — 
through  an  equally  protracted  period,  perhaps — to  de¬ 
velop  him  into  a  perfect  man.  The  further  investiga¬ 
tion  is  pushed  into  the  past  the  more  evident  it  becomes 
that  time  is  a  big  element  in  divine  achievement. 

Whether  this  way  of  mapping  the  past  will  commend 
itself  to  the  evangelical  mind,  each  reader  will  have  to 
decide  for  himself.  This  much  will  have  to  be  con¬ 
ceded,  that  the  traditional  system  of  biblical  chronology 
is  liable  to  serious  amendment.  We  are  no  longer  sure 
that  God  was  occupied  just  one  hundred  and  forty-four 
hours  in  creating  the  world  or  that  He  created  it  four 
thousand  and  four  years  before  the  birth  of  Christ.  If 
these  amendments  require  to  be  made,  what  other 
amendments  of  a  more  serious  character  will  follow  in 
their  wake  no  one  is  wise  enough  even  to  conjecture. 
Of  this,  however,  I  am  thoroughly  confident,  that  what¬ 
ever  subsequent  discoveries  may  be  made — if  justly  in¬ 
terpreted — they  will  reveal  in  only  fuller  light  the  won¬ 
derfulness  of  the  natural  world,  the  dignity  of  man  and 
the  glory  of  God.  To  be  afraid  of  discoveries,  and  to 


188  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


put  a  ban  upon  investigators,  is  a  transparent  confession 
of  unfaith. 

Human  reconstruction,  however,  is  not  complete  un¬ 
less  along  with  the  establishment  of  normal  relations 
between  man  and  God  the  like  result  is  achieved  as 
between  man  and  man.  The  first  does  not  carry  the 
second  along  with  it.  It  might  seem  that  it  ought  to, 
but  it  does  not.  Being  devout  does  not  guarantee  be¬ 
ing  fraternal.  Hence  to  the  inquiring  Pharisee  Jesus 
gave  not  one  commandment  but  two,  that  of  love  to 
God  and  that  of  love  to  one’s  neighbor.  From  failure 
to  recognize  the  duality  of  obligation  society  does  not 
become  harmonious  as  fast  as  it  becomes  religious.  The 
number  of  churches  in  a  community  cannot  be  taken 
as  measure  of  communal  tranquillity.  Sometimes  the 
inharmony  extends  even  to  the  relation  between  the 
churches  themselves. 

There  are  men  who  pray  to  God  on  Sunday  and 
prey  on  their  neighbors  week  days.  Of  two  harp- 
strings  each  may  vibrate  with  a  clear  musical  resonance, 
but  that  does  not  insure  against  dissonance  when  the 
two  are  set  vibrating  at  the  same  time.  This  may  be 
called  a  religious  world,  but  it  is  a  very  quarrelsome 
one.  All  of  the  nations  engaged  in  the  recent  most 
ghastly  war  of  all  history  worshipped  God,  except  Ger¬ 
many,  which  claimed  to  have  a  god  of  its  own. 

Society  means  not  simply  population,  but  all  the  ac¬ 
tions  and  reactions  that  transpire  between  its  members. 
So  that  for  Christ  to  save  the  world  means  not  only 
the  redemption  of  individual  inhabitants  but  the  con¬ 
version  of  all  their  reciprocal  relations.  That  is  ex- 


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pressed  in  St.  John’s  vision  of  the  Holy  City,  which 
carries  with  it  the  idea  of  a  sanctity  which  pervades 
the  organization  and  not  merely  the  individual  citizens 
comprised  in  the  organization. 

This  principle  constitutes  the  preacher’s  warrant  for 
extending  his  interest  to  the  social,  civic  and  industrial 
relations  of  people.  On  a  recent  public  occasion  when 
there  were  being  considered  the  interests  of  certain  in¬ 
stitutions  maintained  abroad  by  American  money,  in 
which  the  representatives  of  a  variety  of  nationalities 
were  brought  together  in  fraternal  and  sympathetic 
relations,  one  of  the  speakers  defined  civilization  as 
“the  art  of  pleasantly  living  together.”  The  preacher 
is  therefore  quite  within  his  sphere  whether  he  makes 
war  upon  what  separates  man  from  God  to  the  invalida¬ 
tion  of  man’s  divine  sonship,  or  makes  war  upon  what 
separates  man  from  man  to  the  disintegration  of  society. 
His  sphere  is  as  broad  as  the  field  of  moral  action  and 
relation. 

There  are  words  of  great  moment  which,  either  from 
too  frequent  use  or  from  careless  use,  become  in  time 
bereft  of  their  proper  force  and  significance.  One  can 
render  valuable  service  by  taking  such  words  and  seek¬ 
ing  to  reinvigorate  them  with  the  energy  proper  to  them. 
For  that  reason  I  have  written  as  follows  on  the  word 

9. 

FAITH 

Faith  is  a  great  word,  too  great  to  be  put  to  small 
uses.  Language  as  a  whole,  and  its  individual  words, 


190  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


shrink  in  consequence  of  being  made  to  render  menial 
service.  They  mean  as  much  as  they  are  made  to  mean 
by  the  one  who  employs  them.  Language  is  something 
into  which  meaning  has  to  be  put  as  well  as  something 
from  which  meaning  has  to  be  drawn  out.  It  is  in  that 
respect  like  a  musical  instrument  that  depends  for  ef¬ 
fects  upon  the  man  who  plays  it.  A  diminutive  man 
cannot  be  an  effective  reader.  He  will  bring  Shake¬ 
speare  and  even  the  Bible  down  to  the  level  of  the 
ordinary.  What  might  not  the  love  chapter  in  the 
Corinthian  letter  mean  if  repeated  by  St.  Paul  or  the 
Lord’s  prayer  if  voiced  by  Jesus? 

That,  then,  is  what  I  mean  by  calling  faith  a  great 
word,  a  capacious  word.  It  holds  all  the  meaning  that 
the  soul  is  capable  of  breathing  into  it.  It  differs  from 
belief:  is  more  vital:  has  more  of  the  dynamic  property. 
Belief  is  more  passive;  is  rather  a  matter  of  assent, 
which  is  easy,  costs  little.  Even  an  idle  and  indifferent 
soul  can  say  “yes”  and  not  feel  the  strain  of  it. 

Faith  denotes  a  condition  under  which  one  has  a 
sense  of  being  laid  hold  upon  and  mastered.  We  hold 
our  beliefs,  but  our  faith  holds  us.  We  are  borne  along 
by  that  in  which  we  have  faith  as  among  the  high  moun¬ 
tains  a  boulder  is  carried  by  the  glacier  in  whose  clutch 
the  boulder  has  been  seized.  I  never  obtained  a  distinct 
conception  of  faith  or  had  it  visualized  till  I  first  saw  a 
boulder  picked  up  by  a  glacier  and  irresistibly  borne 
along  by  it.  At  once  the  boulder  became  sharer  in  the 
glacier’s  movement  and  participant  in  the  glacier’s  tre¬ 
mendous  momentum. 

In  like  manner  that  in  which  I  have  faith  determines 


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the  direction  in  which  I  move  and  the  force  of  my 
movement.  My  faith  may  relate  itself  to  a  person, 
human  or  divine.  Instead  of  to  a  person  it  may  connect 
itself  with  an  idea  or  a  doctrine.  And  if  it  is  a  great 
doctrine  that  I  have  to  do  with,  or  rather  that  has  to  do 
with  me,  and  if  it  has  gained  such  a  hold  on  me  as  I 
saw  physically  exemplified  on  the  mountain,  then  it  is 
evident  how  substantial  will  be  its  control  over  me. 

Intelligence,  even  without  the  reenforcement  of 
faith,  is  a  working  factor  in  life,  and  money  also  makes 
an  amount  of  contribution  toward  the  same  end;  yet 
after  all  it  is  faith  that  constitutes  the  supreme  enginery 
to  which  are  referable  the  achievements  of  a  masterlv 

a/ 

life  and  of  a  productive  history.  It  alone  deepens  the 
throb  of  the  individual  and  the  general  heart.  The  wind 
may  stir  the  surface  of  the  sea,  but  only  a  loftier  influ¬ 
ence  suffices  to  move  and  control  the  tides. 

Only  in  this  way  can  we  understand  why  Abraham 
became  the  father  of  three  religions;  Moses  the  uni¬ 
versal  lawgiver,  Paul  the  creator  of  Christian  theology, 
Washington  the  father  of  his  country,  Lincoln  the  great 
emancipator. 

Faith  is  the  universal  recipe  for  human  greatness  of 
character  and  therefore  greatness  of  achievement.  The 
mere  fact  of  being  person  is  no  guarantee  of  efficiency. 
A  man  may  be  gifted  by  nature  and  have  those  gifts 
supplemented  by  a  liberal  education  and  yet  count  for 
nothing  as  a  working  factor,  make  no  mark  while  he 
lives,  create  no  vacancy  when  he  dies  and  spend  his 
years  marking  time.  Results  are  disappointing,  but 
create  no  surprise  any  more  than  there  is  surprise  that 


192  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


a  cannonball  lying  upon  the  ground  does  no  execution. 
Our  man  is  ineffectual  for  the  same  reason  as  the  can¬ 
nonball,  because  he  is  the  subject  of  no  compelling  force 
such  as  exists  in  being  controlled  by  some  big  idea,  vast 
truth,  dominating  purpose.  Such  trained  impotencies 
the  world  is  full  of.  They  may  be  sound;  so  is  the 
cannonball.  They  are  probably  weighted  with  solid 
possibilities  of  effect ;  so  is  the  cannonball.  But  in  one 
case  as  in  the  other,  there  is  none  of  that  vis  a  tergo 
that  converts  possibility  into  actuality ;  no  impulse  gath¬ 
ered  from  a  point  above  the  level  of  the  ground  which 
can  create  the  efficiency  that  insures  large  accomplish¬ 
ment. 

It  is  much  easier  to  apprehend  religious  truth  than  it 
is  to  comprehend  it.  In  the  first  instance  we  seize  upon 
truths  in  their  individuality,  and  in  the  second  we  seek 
to  grasp  them  in  their  several  reactions  upon  each  other. 
Truths  are  fractional:  truth  is  integral.  It  is  at  the 
suggestion  of  this  fact  that  I  have  written  on 

10. 

THE  SHEEP  AND  THE  GOATS 

Under  these  two  divisions  the  Lord  classifies  the 
world’s  population.  A  little  later  on  in  the  chapter 
(Matthew  twenty-five)  there  is  set  forth  the  standard 
dependent  upon  which  the  classification  was  made. 

Sometimes,  especially  in  my  later  years,  it  has  been 
a  question  with  me  whether  there  is  not  the  disposition 
on  the  part  of  some  of  the  clergy  to  confine  the  king¬ 
dom  of  heaven  within  frontiers  somewhat  narrower 
than  are  required  by  the  Lord’s  own  intention. 


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193 


This  is  not  written  for  the  purpose  of  making  the 
kingdom  mean  less,  but  with  the  desire  to  have  counted 
as  citizens  of  the  kingdom  all  that  by  any  possibility 
belong  there.  There  is  always  encouragement  in  num¬ 
bers  and  we  sincerely  desire  to  have  that  encouragement 
just  so  far  as  it  is  legitimate. 

The  division  into  sheep  and  goats  seems  a  harsh 
means  of  classification  till  we  read  further  on  and  dis¬ 
cover  what  meaning  is  determined  for  it  by  the  Lord’s 
method  of  application. 

If  we  accept  as  valid  the  interpretation  which  is  given 
to  the  Gospel  by  a  considerable  element  of  Evangelical 
preachers  we  shall  have  to  conclude  that  citizenship  in 
the  heavenly  kingdom  involves  on  the  part  of  the  indi¬ 
vidual  his  conscious  relation  to  Jesus  Christ.  A  part 
of  the  purpose  of  this  particular  section  of  Scripture 
is  to  show  to  inquirers  that  such  conscious  relation  to 
Him  is  not  necessarily  involved. 

When  Christ  welcomed  men  to  citizenship — that  is 
to  say,  to  a  place  among  the  sheep — because  they  had 
given  Him  something  to  eat  when  He  was  hungry,  and 
to  drink  when  thirsty,  and  entertainment  when  He  was 
a  stranger,  they  replied  that  they  did  not  know  that  it 
was  to  Him  that  they  had  rendered  any  such  service. 
“But  it  was,”  He  answered.  “Hungry  people  you  have 
fed;  to  thirsty  people  you  have  given  drink:  and  those 
needing  hospitality  you  have  taken  care  of.  Doing  it 
to  them  I  count  the  same  thing  as  doing  it  to  me.  That 
you  were  not  thinking  of  me  while  doing  it  makes  no 
difference.  I  have  so  identified  myself  with  man,  with 
all  men,  even  the  humblest,  that  being  kind  to  them 


194  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


counts  as  loyalty  to  me.”  This  identification  of  Him¬ 
self  with  mankind,  such  that  in  touching  any  member 
of  the  race  we  touch  Him,  is  one  of  the  thoughts  that 
give  distinction  to  our  Lord’s  ministry.  There  is  noth¬ 
ing  absolutely  new  in  the  principle,  for  it  is  as  when  a 
mother  takes  offense  at  the  wrong  done  her  child  or 
is  herself  grateful  when  the  child  has  kindness  shown 
to  it. 

But  the  point  which  we  are  just  now  anxious  to 
emphasize  is  that  when  one  renders  a  loving  service  to 
another  Christ  recognizes  the  act  as  an  evidence  of 
loyalty  to  Himself  even  though  He  may  not  have  been 
at  all  in  the  doer’s  mind  or  have  come  within  the  circle 
of  the  doer’s  acquaintance.  Notwithstanding  all  that 
this  signifies,  it  is  something  which  I  never  presented 
in  my  own  preaching  and  never  heard  any  other 
preacher  present. 

It  seems  to  indicate  that  whenever  and  wherever 
service  is  rendered  to  another  out  of  the  fullness  of  a 
loving  heart,  that  service  has  divine  account  taken  of 
it,  and  the  doer  has  divine  recognition  extended  to  him. 
The  doer  may  not  be  the  member  of  any  church  nor  an 
attendant  upon  any  religious  service.  He  may  be  ut¬ 
terly  ignorant  of  the  catechism  and  the  Bible,  indeed 
ignorant  of  the  historic  Christ  Himself.  It  is  quality 
that  counts,  not  the  way  in  which  the  quality  is  secured. 
It  is  results  and  not  the  machinery  by  which  results  are 
obtained  that  need  to  interest  us. 

Taking  this  position  in  no  way  involves  making  light 
of  divine  efficiency.  If  it  is  true,  as  is  claimed  in  John’s 
Gospel,  that  Christ  is  the  light  of  every  man  that  cometh 


REFLECTIONS 


195 


into  the  world,  we  can  understand  how  the  divinely 
implanted  seeds  of  affection  could  fructify  in  acts  of 
affectionate  service.  We  can  have  no  interest  in  ques¬ 
tioning  the  operating  influence  of  God’s  Spirit  in  soft¬ 
ening  the  hardness  of  the  heart  and  mellowing  it  to  a 
condition  of  tender  and  beautiful  fruitfulness.  But 
the  value  of  such  condition  does  not  depend  upon  the 
man’s  knowing  how  it  was  produced  nor  by  whom  it 
was  produced,  but  that  it  was  produced,  that  it  existed, 
and  existed  as  an  affectionate  efficiency  in  practical 
life. 

When  the  Lord  saw  an  act  that  was  evidently  mo¬ 
tived  by  an  affectionate  impulse  He  estimated  it  at  its 
face  value  without  subjecting  it  to  theological  tests. 
Why  does  not  the  Church  do  the  same  thing?  Why 
ought  not  the  Church  to  do  the  same  thing  and  make 
frank  declaration  to  the  world  that  membership  in  it 
is  open  to  every  man,  woman  and  child  who  acts  in 
pursuance  of  the  principle  that  it  is  love  that  is  the 
fulfilling  of  the  law?  The  pursuance  of  such  a  policy 
would  certainly  do  something  toward  creating  in  the 
world  at  large  a  kindlier  sentiment  toward  the  Church 
and  bring  within  the  fold  many  who  now  stand  toward 
it  in  a  hesitant  and  unsympathetic  relation. 


The  late  General  Armstrong,  principal  of  Hampton 
Institute,  looked  forward  to  entrance  into  the  future 
world  with  a  very  happy  curiosity,  having  answered 
with  a  quite  confident  negation  the  question 


196  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


11. 

DOES  THE  HEAVENLY  WORLD  DIFFER  FUNDAMENTALLY 

FROM  THE  EARTHLY  ONE? 

I  excuse  myself  for  writing  upon  so  difficult  a  theme 
by  this  consideration,  that  it  means  more  even  to  feel 
of  a  great  question  than  thoroughly  to  digest  a  diminu¬ 
tive  one. 

In  approaching  our  matter  it  will  be  pertinent  to 
consider  the  steadiness  of  policy  that  appears  to  prevail 
throughout  the  entire  material  universe,  thus  establish¬ 
ing  the  principle  that  the  Divine  Mind  never  works  in 
one  part  of  its  realm  in  such  a  way  as  to  contradict 
what  it  does  in  another  part,  or  in  such  a  way  as  to 
ignore  what  it  has  done  in  another  part. 

Since  it  has  been  discovered  that  the  most  distant 
heavenly  bodies  that  have  been  brought  within  the  reach 
of  our  scientific  estimate  are  in  general  subject  to  the 
same  laws  as  those  that  are  more  nearly  neighbored 
to  us,  we  seem  justified  in  assuming  that  bodies  remoter 
than  any  that  we  have  yet  been  able  to  subject  to  our 
investigation  are  amenable  to  the  same  laws,  constituted 
of  similar  material  and  propelled  by  the  same  impulses. 
It  is  only  on  that  assumption  that  astronomy  can  con¬ 
tinue  to  be  a  subject  of  strictly  scientific  interest.  If 
gravity,  for  example,  operated  differently  at  those  ce¬ 
lestial  altitudes  with  which  we  are  unfamiliar  than  it 
does  in  regions  that  we  have  been  able  to  canvass,  there 
would  be  lacking  any  basis  upon  which  scientific  thought 
could  interestedly  or  profitably  proceed.  Matters,  how¬ 
ever,  have  progressed  to  such  a  point  that  Science  does 
not  expect  to  encounter  irreconcilable  surprises.  It 


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197 


feels  confident  that  it  has  caught  the  Lord’s  thought  and 
that  it  will  remain  steadfast. 

We  can  go  further  and  claim  that  these  forces,  effec¬ 
tive  in  nature,  do  not  always  confine  themselves  to  the 
material  world,  but  spread  across  into  the  region  of 
thought  and  morals,  to  that  extent  breaking  down  the 
wall  of  partition  between  the  realm  of  things  and  the 
realm  of  spirit,  producing  the  two  into  one  kingdom. 
The  doctrine  of  “natural  laws  in  the  spiritual  world” 
is  not  at  all  unfamiliar  to  thoughtful  minds.  It  is  on 
that  account  that  Jesus  could  freely  quote  from  com¬ 
mon  things,  especially  from  living  things,  in  illustration 
of  moral  and  spiritual  truths.  It  is  only  because  there 
is  an  interior  sympathy  and  understanding  between  the 
two  that  there  could  be  any  propriety  in  using  one  as 
means  of  setting  forth  the  other. 

What  I  mean  can  be  made  plain  by  referring  to  the 
germination  of  a  buried  acorn  or  other  seed.  The 
nucleus  of  life  that  is  in  the  shell  bursts  itself  free  and 
comes  out,  comes  up,  rises  from  the  dead.  That  is  resur¬ 
rection  operative  in  the  vegetable  world ;  the  same  thing 
in  a  small  way  and  on  material  ground  that  transpired 
that  first  Sunday  morning  at  the  Lord’s  grave.  St.  Paul 
appreciated  the  spiritual  import  of  the  revival  of  a  seed 
covered  under  the  soil  and  therefore  introduced  it  into 
his  wonderful  resurrection  chapter  in  his  letter  to  the 
Corinthians,  which  he  would  hardly  have  done  had 
there  been  only  a  casual  and  accidental  resemblance  be¬ 
tween  vegetable  and  personal  resurrection.  Illustration 
to  be  genuine  must  be  vitally  related  to  the  thing  illus¬ 
trated. 


198  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


So,  also,  St.  John  in  his  Apocalyptic  letter  paints  his 
picture  of  the  heavenly  Jerusalem  in  colors  taken  from 
an  earthly  palette ;  and  his  picture  would  be  worthless 
and  misleading  were  the  lines  which  he  draws  such  that 
the  human  mind,  in  contemplating  them,  would  be  led 
astray  by  attaching  to  them  a  degree  of  practical  sig¬ 
nificance.  A  representation  that  is  a  complete  falsifica¬ 
tion  is  a  great  deal  worse  than  no  representation.  We 
may  not  be  able  to  interpret  John’s  imagery  in  its  en¬ 
tirety,  but  we  can  depend  upon  it  that  our  minds  are 
moving  in  the  direction  of  the  truth  when  we  give  to 
that  imagery  its  first  and  easiest  meaning. 

The  issue  to  which  the  foregoing  paragraphs  point 
with  no  uncertain  finger  is  that  there  is  but  one  world, 
as  is  denoted  bv  our  word  universe,  which  means 
“turned  into  one,”  “combined  into  one  whole,”  and  that 
what  we  call  the  next  world,  or  the  future  world,  is  at 
most  only  another  part,  or  a  different  aspect  of  the  one 
world  that  now  is  and  always  has  been. 

Anything  that  produces  definiteness  of  impression 
helps  to  create  belief,  for  it  gives  to  thought  something 
upon  which  it  can  poise  itself.  Such  support  no  sincere 
teacher  will  fabricate,  but  upon  quite  a  slender  branch 
a  bird  can  plume  itself  in  preparation  for  a  far  flight. 
An  adult  cannot,  and  still  more  a  child  cannot,  believe 
in  what  affords  to  the  mind  no  resting-place.  As  we 
have  seen,  slight  but  very  suggestive  intimations  are 
given  of  a  region  kindred  to  our  present  dwelling  place, 
and  those  intimations — and  they  are  many — should  be 
faithfully  utilized.  If  a  child  should  ask  me  if  in  heaven 
there  would  be  toys  that  he  could  play  with,  I  would 


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say,  ‘‘Yes,  or  if  not  just  such  toys  as  you  have  now, 
others  that  will  satisfy  you  just  as  well.”  All  he  wants 
is  to  be  sure  that  he  will  be  satisfied.  That  gives  him 
something  upon  which  his  mind  can  rest.  David’s  mind 
rested  there  when  he  wrote,  “I  shall  be  satisfied.” 

Moreover,  if  we  do  not  carry  into  the  other  world 
the  personality  which  we  at  present  possess,  then  by 
having  the  old  personality  (which  is  ourselves)  replaced 
by  a  new,  we  stop  at  the  grave  and  “immortality”  is  a 
misnomer.  But  if  present  personality  does  survive,  then 
there  will  survive  also  its  present  aptitudes  and  appre¬ 
ciations,  which  will  involve  the  continuance  of  an  en¬ 
vironment  so  far  like  the  present  as  to  be  in  adjustment 
to  those  aptitudes  and  meet  the  requirements  of  those 
appreciations. 

It  is  worth  a  great  deal  to  us  if  by  consulting  the 
intimations  afforded  us  of  the  relation  between  the 
sphere  we  occupy  now  and  the  realm  spiritual,  we  can 
come  to  regard  that  realm  with  something  the  un¬ 
strained  and  unstilted  thought  with  which  we  contem¬ 
plate  the  regions  beyond  the  Pacific  and  the  Atlantic 
and  the  peoples  occupying  them.  The  late  Mr.  Glad¬ 
stone  was  not  a  man  chargeable  with  mental  whimsi¬ 
cality,  and  yet  it  was  in  just  such  way  that  he  was  wont 
to  contemplate  the  unseen  land  and  the  dear  ones  living 
there.  It  appears  that  there  was  some  one  particular 
friend  who  was  especially  close  to  his  heart  in  the 
prayer  he  was  accustomed  to  offer  and  which  was 
recited  with  other  prayers  when  his  body  was  deposited 
in  Westminster  Hall.  In  that  prayer  occur  these 
words,  “Tell  him,  O  gracious  Lord,  if  it  may  be,  how 


200  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


much  I  love  him  and  miss  him  and  long  to  see  him 
again;  and  if  there  be  ways  in  which  he  may  come, 
vouchsafe  him  to  me  as  a  guide  and  guard,  and  grant 
me  a  sense  of  his  nearness,  in  such  degree  as  Thy  laws 
permit.”  The  closer  and  more  sympathetic  the  two 
realms  are  felt  to  be,  and  the  more  they  are  conceived 
to  have  in  common,  the  less  unnatural  Mr.  Gladstone’s 
prayer  is  realized  to  be,  and  the  more  possible  that  the 
time  may  come,  if  it  has  not  already  come,  when  there 
shall  be  interchange  of  communication  between  the  two 
continents. 


Religion  and  Science  have  been  pitted  against  each 
other  for  centuries.  Assuming  that  religion  is  a  real¬ 
ity,  and  assuming  that  science  is  a  reality,  there  can 
be  no  inconsistency  between  them,  for  realities  can 
never  clash.  This  matter  is  handled  in  a  pleasant  and 
intelligible  way  in  chapter  seven  of  John  Fiske’s  “Idea 
of  God.” 


12. 


DARWINISM  AND  THE  CHURCH 

No  matter  how  many  times  science  has  propounded 
and  substantiated  a  theory  that  contradicts  the  tradi¬ 
tional  interpretation  of  Scripture,  nor  how  stiff  a  fight 
the  church  has  put  up  against  the  theory,  some  way 
has  always  been  found  of  reconciling  theory  and  the¬ 
ology.  It  is  evidence  of  the  firm  hold  which  Scripture 
has  upon  the  public  mind  that  the  long  series  of  these 
readjustments,  to  which  the  church  has  been  compelled, 
has  not  seemed  to  impair  the  confidence  which  the  pub- 


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lie  has  in  the  Bible’s  essential  truthfulness  and  value. 
How  long  this  series  of  readjustments  has  been,  one 
can  easily  discover  by  reading  the  late  Andrew  D. 
White’s  work  entitled,  “History  of  the  Warfare  of 
Science  and  Theology.”  Of  course  in  each  case  it  has 
cost  theology  a  degree  of  humiliation,  but  there  is  a 
certain  arrogance  pertaining  to  it,  as  well  as  to  science, 
that  makes  it  candidate  for  the  discipline  of  defeat. 
There  is  so  much  of  value  pertaining  to  sturdy  convic¬ 
tion  that  it  seems  a  pity  that  it  has  so  often  to  be 
toned  down. 

The  doctrine  of  evolution  which  is  just  now  a  kind 
of  storm  center,  has  been  of  late  years  lying  rather 
quietly  in  the  public  mind  and  has  only  recently  been 
made  a  burning  question  by  the  fact  that  it  is  being 
brought  into  our  schools  and  colleges,  to  the  perver¬ 
sion  of  the  young  mind  it  is  claimed,  and  to  the  under¬ 
mining  of  its  confidence  in  the  Scriptures  and  in  the 
religion  which  is  documented  in  those  Scriptures. 

If  that  claim  can  be  substantiated  it  undoubtedly 
produces  a  serious  situation,  but  at  the  same  time  it 
has  to  be  said  that  there  is  nothing  so  true  as  the 
truth.  It  is  the  truth,  our  Lord  said,  that  shall  make 
us  free,  and  not  any  perversion  or  falsification  of  the 
truth.  It  is  better  that  our  young  religionists  should 
know  everything  than  that  there  should  be  fostered  in 
their  inquisitive  minds  the  suspicion  that  there  are 
certain  truths  being  concealed  from  them  which,  had 
they  been  known  to  them,  would  cut  the  ground  from 
under  all  religion,  at  least  from  under  our  own  reli¬ 
gion.  There  is  nothing  which  a  young  person  so  de- 


202  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


sires  to  know  as  the  thing  which  he  suspects  is  being 
purposely  kept  from  him.  And  it  is  probable  that 
already  there  is  being  made  at  the  public  library  an 
unusual  call  for  Darwin’s  “Descent  of  Man.” 

While  it  is  probably  the  case  that  the  absolute  truth 
of  Darwin’s  derivation  of  man  has  not  been  absolutely 
demonstrated,  yet  there  is  that  in  the  doctrine  which 
appeals  to  me  and  with  the  spirit  of  which  I  warmly 
sympathize,  and  I  would  very  much  like  to  have  such 
confirmatory  evidence  adduced  as  would  put  the  mat¬ 
ter  beyond  question.  For  my  acceptance  of  the  theory 
has  in  no  wise  shaken  my  confidence  in  the  essential 
truthfulness  of  Scripture  nor  embarrassed  me  in  my 
preaching  of  the  Gospel. 

That  man  should  have  derived  from  a  long  series  of 
antecedent  conditions,  each  a  slight  improvement  upon 
its  predecessor,  is  in  so  close  accord  with  what  we  every 
day  see  occurring  before  our  eyes,  that  for  him  to  have 
sprung  to  a  condition  of  complete  and  finished  human¬ 
ness  with  no  previous  rehearsals  for  such  humanness, 
is  to  suppose  that  the  Creator,  whose  entire  economy 
of  action,  as  we  are  made  familiar  with  it,  is  an  economy 
of  rigid  adherence  to  established  methods,  suddenly, 
in  a  spirit  of  freakishness,  abandoned  that  economy  and 
produced  an  object  that  was  already  ripe  without  al¬ 
lowing  it  ripening  opportunity. 

What  we  learn  from  the  observation  of  nature’s 
methods  is  that  in  the  sphere  of  living  things  the  stage 
at  which  an  object  arrives  on  the  attainment  of  its 
maturity  stands  at  a  greater  or  less  remove  from  the 
stage  at  which  it  commences  to  exist,  the  intervening 


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space  being  always  covered  by  a  process  which  we 
know  as  growth.  This  is  so  universally  and  persis¬ 
tently  the  fact  that  we  have  come  to  regard  it  as  a 
law  of  nature,  that  is  to  say,  one  of  the  fixed  methods 
by  which  God  acts  in  the  natural  world.  Of  course 
we  are  not  authorized  nor  qualified  to  say  that  the 
Creator  and  Sustainer  of  the  universe  never  violates 
one  of  his  own  laws,  but  any  event  that  claims  to  be 
such  violation  we  regard  with  immense  suspicion,  and 
always  feel,  and  are  bound  to  feel,  that  the  case  is  not 
all  in,  that  the  problem  has  elements  that  have  not  been 
taken  into  the  account,  or  that  an  untrained  imagination, 
or  a  leaning  toward  the  picturesque,  has  usurped  the 
function  belonging  to  a  spirit  of  cool  prosaic  interpre¬ 
tation. 

A  study  of  so  much  of  the  world  as  God  has  to  do 
with  has  developed  in  us  great  confidence  in  symmetry 
and  uniformity  of  process,  and  whenever  anything  oc¬ 
curs  within  the  domain  of  divine  action  that  appears 
on  the  face  of  it  to  be  a  violation  of  harmony,  instead 
of  putting  its  face  value  upon  it  we  treat  it  interroga¬ 
tively  and  insist  that  if  we  had  a  larger  understanding 
of  all  that  is  involved  we  should  discover  that  what 
looks  like  exception  is  unexplained  conformity. 

An  instance  of  this  occurred  in  the  seeming  misbe¬ 
havior  of  the  planet  Uranus,  at  that  time  the  outermost 
known  planet  of  our  solar  system.  The  actions  of  the 
planet  did  not  conform  to  what  was  required  of  it  by 
the  principles  of  planetary  motion  as  determined  by 
prolonged  years  of  detailed  astronomic  observation. 
Now  the  astronomers,  instead  of  saying  that  Uranus 


204  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


had  run  wild  or  that  astronomy  was  an  unreliable  sci¬ 
ence  or  that  God  had  allowed  to  the  planet  a  little 
fanciful  playfulness  of  its  own,  assumed  that  it  was 
the  same  well  behaved  creature  as  all  the  other  seven 
planets,  that  God  in  his  administration  of  it  stood  by 
the  inviolable  system  of  his  own  establishment;  and 
they  went  about  to  discover  what  was  the  unknown 
and  disturbing  element  that  had  the  appearance  of 
irregularity.  Two  astronomers  in  particular  applied 
themselves  to  the  problem,  and  within  a  few  hours  of 
each  other  discovered  in  a  far-off  corner  of  the  sky 
a  hitherto  unknown  planet  whose  calculated  influence 
upon  Uranus  was  just  sufficient  to  account  for  its  seem¬ 
ing  frolicsomeness.  Of  course  no  one  is  qualified,  and 
least  of  all  myself,  to  say  that  what  Scripture  repre¬ 
sents  as  being  the  first  man  and  the  first  woman  were 
not  produced  in  a  manner  that  differed  from  the  one 
employed  in  the  production,  so  far  as  history  relates, 
of  billions  of  other  men  and  women,  but  before  publicly 
making  it  a  feature  of  my  theology,  I  should  want  some 
other  authority  for  the  glaring  irregularity  of  their 
birth  than  the  unsupported  testimony  of  an  unknown 
author  writing  at  an  unknown  date. 

If  Adam  and  Eve  were  the  first  man  and  first  woman 
and  were  not  produced  in  some  such  way  as  the  Book 
of  Genesis  describes,  it  looks  very  much  as  though 
they  must  have  come  along  in  some  such  way  as  Mr. 
Darwin  describes,  come  up  from  humble  beginnings 
just  as  all  other  fine  things  come  up;  come  up  as  the 
oak  comes  up  from  an  acorn  buried  in  the  dirt.  A 
blossom  is  none  the  less  fine  for  having  to  trace  its 


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history  from  a  root  buried  in  the  ground.  It  is  not 
origin  but  destiny  that  interests  me.  If  it  is  the  case 
that  a  troglodyte  lies  somewhere  back  in  the  long  line 
of  my  ancestry  and  I  could  get  a  picture  of  him  I 
would  use  it  to  embellish  my  autobiography;  or  any¬ 
thing  prior  to  him  of  a  still  less  polite  but  perhaps  more 
picturesque  order. 

The  weakness  rather  than  the  strength  of  the  Bible 
lies  in  its  oddities, — such  as  the  unnatural  birth  of  two 
humans,  God’s  conversation  with  a  snake,  the  still¬ 
standing  of  the  sun  without  apparent  rupture  of  the 
balanced  harmony  of  the  celestial  universe.  These  fea¬ 
tures  tend  to  avert  from  cordial  acceptance  of  the  Bible, 
many  who  would  naturally  be  its  hearty  advocates,  and 
will  continue  to  do  so  as  long  as  they  are  insisted  upon 
as  essential  features  of  a  divine  revelation. 

That  there  are  not  more  such  recalcitrants  is  due  to 
the  fact  that  these  anomalies  are  considered  as  the 
product  of  a  primitive  and  imaginative  age  and  not  to 
be  made  account  of  as  against  the  appealing  motive, 
stately  character  and  august  demands  of  the  grand 
trend  of  Scripture. 

The  recent  attempt  of  the  Government  to  make 
people  good  by  statute  has  resulted  in  so  much  resist¬ 
ance  on  the  part  not  only  of  the  lawless  but  also  of 
the  law-abiding,  as  condemns  the  attempt  as  being 
fraught  not  only  with  difficulty  but  also  with  appar¬ 
ent  impossibility.  The  resistance  which  at  this  writ¬ 
ing  is  a  steadily  growing  one,  suggests  that  while 
Government  has  its  business  to  mind,  the  individual 


206  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


has  his  own  business  to  mind  and  is  the  only  one  that 
can  be  wisely  allowed  to  mind  it.  My  feeling  upon 
the  matter  can  best  be  expressed  under  the  title 

13. 

COMPULSORY  MORALITY 

There  are  being  devised  so  many  schemes  for  mak¬ 
ing  people  good  by  law,  that  the  validity  of  that  method 
of  reconstructing  society  is  becoming  a  live  and  prac¬ 
tical  question.  It  is  so  much  simpler  than  the  current 
method  and  so  much  swifter  in  its  operation  that  if 
it  yields  substantial  results  it  will  be  the  part  of  wisdom 
and  economy  to  accord  to  it  earnest  support  and  to  seek 
to  have  our  legislative  work  done  by  men  who  are  its 
confessed  advocates.  So  much  of  what  used  to  be 
accomplished  by  hard  work  is  now  done  just  as  suc¬ 
cessfully  and  much  more  expeditiously  by  some  kind 
of  impersonal  contrivance,  that  if  the  same  principle 
can  be  applied  to  the  inculcation  of  morality  and  the 
promotion  of  piety,  nothing  will  be  lost  and  very  much 
gained. 

In  dealing  with  the  matter  one  point  that  should  be 
conscientiously  guarded  is  that  within  the  scope  of 
personality  there  is  a  larger  or  a  smaller  area  which  no 
one  but  God  is  authorized  to  invade.  It  is  so  far  forth 
very  much  like  the  holy  of  holies  of  the  old  Hebrew 
temple,  into  which  only  God  entered  and  the  high 
priest  once  in  the  year.  Of  our  personal  holy  of  holies 
we  are  individually  our  own  high  priest.  We  are  not 
undertaking  to  say  how  inclusive  or  exclusive  that  area, 
— secured  only  to  God  and  self, — may  be,  only  it  is 


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there.  There  is  that  within  us  that  cannot  be  made 
common  property  and  is  beyond  the  reach  of  all  human 
intrusion.  This  does  not  solve  our  problem,  but  it  is 
a  fact  that  is  to  be  kept  definitely  in  mind,  as  indicating 
that  there  is  a  personal  frontier  which,  whoever  under¬ 
takes  to  cross,  thereby  attests  himself  a  thief  and  a 
robber.  The  acceptance  of  that  doctrine  is  one  strong 
feature  of  Americanism,  and  Americanism,  so  far  as 
capable  of  being  reduced  to  overt  form  is  the  supreme 
judicatory  of  our  land. 

For  the  sake  of  an  illustration,  and  to  show  how 
alien  to  the  American  idea  a  man  can  be,  especially 
if  he  has  become  enthusiastically  inflamed  with  the 
conception  that  he  is  God’s  vicegerent  for  the  moral 
reconstruction  of  society,  such  an  one  having  asked  my 
opinion  upon  a  certain  matter  made  the  ominous  retort 
that  if  I  did  not  alter  my  mind  it  might  be  bad  for 
me.  That  is  un-American  and  an  un-American  is  the 
last  person  in  the  world  to  be  qualified  to  save  Amer¬ 
ica.  He  was  a  house-breaker.  He  tried  to  break  into 
the  sacred  domicile  of  my  exclusive  personality.  My 
thoughts  are  my  own,  and  the  attempt  to  force  them 
was  the  attempt  of  a  vandal,  and  a  sacrilegious  effort 
to  trample  with  unsanctified  feet  upon  what  was 
sacredly  my  own  and  no  one’s  else,  except  God’s.  To 
have  an  opinion  and  to  express  an  opinion,  however, 
are  two  things.  An  expressed  opinion  is  sure  to  drift 
across  the  frontier.  As  Homer  said,  “words  are 
winged”  and  we  cannot  tell  how  far  they  may  fly  or 
upon  what  injudicious  branch  they  may  light;  although 
it  comes  pretty  close  to  Americanism,  if  you  have  an 


208  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


opinion,  to  speak  it,  for  it  is  spoken  opinions  that  do 
a  great  deal  of  the  world’s  work. 

We  must  not,  however,  accord  to  our  own  inner 
sanctuary  so  broad  an  area  as  to  have  it  intersect  the 
rights  and  interests  of  others.  St.  Paul  carefully 
guards  this  point  when  in  speaking  of  meat  that  had 
been  previously  offered  to  idols,  he  says:  “If  by  eat¬ 
ing  such  meat  I  shall  bruise  the  consciences  of  others, 
I  will  eat  none  of  it  so  long  as  the  world  stands.”  The 
Apostle  therein  confesses  that  he  is  responsible  not 
only  for  himself  but  to  some  degree  for  others.  At 
the  same  time  he  does  not  let  the  opportunity  slip  of 
indicating  that  it  is  distinctly  righteous  to  eat  such 
meat  himself ;  he  does  not  complicate  matters  by  admit¬ 
ting  it  to  be  on  general  principles  a  moral  question 
when  he  knows  it  is  not.  He  had  the  confidence  of 
his  convictions.  He  lets  it  be  understood  that  he  was, 
for  other’s  sake,  allowing  an  invasion  of  his  own  sacred 
preserves. 

There  is  in  that  a  quality  of  action  worth  noting.  It 
is  altogether  possible,  not  to  say  probable,  that  he  did 
eat  of  such  meat  himself.  He  did  not  say  that  he 
would  not.  He  did  not  mean  to  have  it  understood 
that  he  would  not.  He  did  not  make  a  conscience 
matter  of  what  he  knew  was  not  a  conscience  matter 
to  any  man  who  had  a  conscience  that  was  intelligent 
and  healthy.  If  he  had  simply  encouraged  those  Ro¬ 
man  Christians  to  act  according  to  the  dictates  of  their 
consciences  and  left  the  matter  there,  he  would  have 
omitted  a  fine  opportunity  for  cultivating  in  them  a 
conscience  that  was  more  rational.  He  would  have  left 


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them  to  believe  that  something  was  wrong  which  he, 
with  his  more  enlightened  moral  sense,  knew  was  not 
wrong. 

For  we  have  to  remember  that  conscience  is  not  an 
infallible  guide.  It  is  like  a  clock  in  that  it  requires 
from  time  to  time  to  be  reset  and  made  to  conform  to 
a  more  perfect  standard.  And  therefore  he  said  to 
them, — “There  is  nothing  inherently  wrong  in  doing 
what  your  mistaken  conscience  causes  you  to  believe  is 
wrong.”  If  he  had  belonged  to  the  class  of  timid 
moralists  he  would  have  told  them  to  observe  the  dic¬ 
tates  of  conscience  and  would  have  stopped  there.  Con¬ 
science  stands  as  much  in  need  of  education  as  the 
intellect  does,  and  theirs  was  uneducated  and  he  told 
them  so. 

When  I  entitled  this  article  “Compulsory  Morality” 
I  accommodated  myself  to  current  conception,  but  there 
is  no  such  thing  as  compulsory  morality.  An  act  that 
we  perform  by  compulsion  is  not  a  moral  act  so  far 
as  our  own  moral  sense  is  concerned,  any  more  than 
the  movement  of  a  man  through  the  air  can  be  called 
flight  when  he  has  been  shot  from  the  mouth  of  a 
cannon.  Compulsory  laws  are  necessary  in  order  to 
meet  the  demands  of  the  lawless,  but  are  in  the  nature 
of  an  insult  when  made  to  apply  to  those  who  are  dis¬ 
posed  to  do  what  is  proper  without  any  law.  Such 
application  may  sometimes  have  to  be  made  in  the 
interests  of  the  lawless  and  in  order  to  avoid  discrim¬ 
ination;  but  even  so  the  ends  of  strict  justice  are  im¬ 
perfectly  met,  and  to  be  obliged  to  refrain  from  doing 
what  on  general  principles  you  know  you  have  a  perfect 


210  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


moral  right  to  do,  is  galling  and  properly  so ;  and  when 
you  are  censured  for  expressing  yourself  as  uncom¬ 
fortable  under  the  infliction,  your  thoughts  incline 
toward  profanity  even  if  you  do  not  allow  yourself  to 
give  it  utterance.  It  produces  a  vast  muttered  chorus 
of  inarticulate  dissent. 

Paul  in  writing  to  Timothy  says  that  'flaw  is  not 
made  for  righteous  men  but  for  the  lawless.”  But 
when  it  is  fastened  on  the  law-abiding  as  well  as  on 
the  lawless  it  produces  that  kind  of  reaction  that  ought 
to  be  expected  from  the  self-respecting  element  of 
community.  To  be  fastened  in  a  go-cart  after  one  has 
learned  to  walk  is  humiliating. 

If  this  abridgment  of  natural  prerogative  is  neces¬ 
sary  in  the  moral  interest  of  others  we  will  take  that 
fact  into  the  account  as  Paul  did  but  like  him  will  insist 
that  in  so  doing  we  are  yielding  to  what,  from  a  moral 
point  of  view,  is  a  counterfeit  obligation,  from  which 
we  expect  in  due  time  to  be  relieved ;  for  we  do  not  like 
to  suppose  that  the  time  will  not  come  when  our  legis¬ 
lators  will  be  competent  to  enact  laws  that  will  put 
necessary  restraint  upon  the  lawless  without  violating 
the  natural  rights  of  the  law-abiding. 


The  reason  why  some  people  acquire  an  education 
and  others  do  not  is  at  bottom  the  fact  that  some  real¬ 
ize  their  opportunities  and  utilize  them,  while  others 
neither  utilize  nor  see.  A  young  man  says,  “I  have  no 
money  and  therefore  I  cannot  get  an  education.”  Very 
likely  he  cannot  get  a  college  education,  but  a  college 
education  is  not  the  only  education  and  I  would  not 


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care  to  say  that  it  is  the  best  education,  and  so  I  say 
that 

14. 

AN  EDUCATION  IS  NO  ONE’S  EXCLUSIVE  PRIVILEGE 

Any  man  under  ordinary  conditions  who  arrives  at 
the  age  of  forty-five,  without  having  become  well  edu¬ 
cated,  has  himself  to  blame  for  it:  it  all  depends  on 
ambition  and  grit,  and  by  grit  I  mean  determination 
that  is  not  blighted  by  adverse  conditions.  There  is  a 
great  plenty  of  college  and  university  in  the  world, 
even  when  Harvard,  Yale  and  Princeton  and  a  hun¬ 
dred  other  similar  but  less  pretentious  institutions  are 
counted  out.  The  world  itself  is  a  university,  which 
is  certain  to  yield  educatory  reactions  if  its  appeals 
are  respected  and  responded  to. 

There  is  something  artificial  in  separating  one’s  self 
for  four  years  from  the  normal  contacts  and  activities 
of  life  and  housing  one’s  self  in  an  intellectual  con¬ 
servatory.  The  proof  of  it  is  seen  in  the  fact  that  no 
one  knows  exactly  what  to  do  with  a  fresh  collegian 
and  what  to  set  him  about.  His  experience  has  edu¬ 
cated  him  but  in  educating  him  into  one  condition  has 
educated  him  out  of  another  and  a  natural  condition. 
Conservatory  flowers  gain  something  but  they  lose 
something.  Making  a  young  fellow  unnaturally  intel¬ 
ligent  by  the  use  of  forced  treatment,  conservatory 
treatment,  has  something  the  same  effect  upon  him 
intellectually  that  it  would  have  upon  him  physically 
if  he  were  put  under  conditions  of  food  and  exercise 
when  he  would  have  nothing  to  do  but  become  more 


212  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


and  more  of  a  corporeal  phenomenon.  It  would  add 
to  his  weight  but  would  correspondingly  blunt  his  prac¬ 
tical  adaptations.  We  mean  all  of  that  when  we  say 
of  a  boy  that  he  is  growing  too  fast.  Rapid  growth  is 
not  the  same  as  solid  growth. 

It  may  seem  inconsistent  in  a  college  graduate  to 
criticise  collegiate  life.  I  am  not  exactly  criticising 
it,  but  only  claiming  that  it  has  not  the  whole  of  the 
argument,  and  that  because  a  young  man  has  not  the 
means  of  a  regular  college  course  is  no  reason  for  his 
abandoning  his  purpose  of  becoming  thoroughly  edu¬ 
cated,  for  after  all  that  has  been  said  and  written  upon 
the  matter  it  should  be  understood  that  what  a  man 
gains  by  college  training  is  not  familiarity  with  the 
topics  studied  there  but  the  intellectual  vigor  that  the 
study  of  those  topics  develops  in  him.  That  has  been 
said  so  many  times  and  said  so  emphatically  that  it 
seems  almost  foolish  to  say  it  again. 

A  man  may  be  deprived  of  a  college  training  by  the 
necessity  he  is  under  of  working  for  a  living.  But 
that  does  not  necessarily  deprive  him  of  the  benefits  of 
such  training,  for  work  is  educating  or  rather  may  be, 
and  whether  it  is  or  not  depends  on  the  man,  depends 
on  whether  he  works  mechanically  or  humanly,  whether 
he  does  it  as  a  chore  or  engrosses  himself  in  it,  which 
latter  is  the  only  kind  that  has  the  finest  value,  and  is 
the  kind  that  always  operates  to  produce  enlightened 
manhood  in  the  worker. 

I  know  all  of  this  by  experience  and  by  observation. 
It  is  one  of  the  problems  that  I  have  brooded  over  for 
sixty  years,  and  I  know  that  there  is  no  body  of  men 


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that  I  can  speak  to  with  more  assurance  of  effect  than 
a  congregation  of  rational  and  industrious  farmers. 
It  takes  body,  brain  and  heart  to  make  good  work,  and, 
those  three  ingredients  present,  the  worker  is  bound 
to  be  on  the  make.  The  reason  why  so  many  millions 
of  common  workers  remain  common,  is  because  they 
consent  to  stand  as  substitutes  for  machines  and  be¬ 
cause  their  employers  for  the  sake  of  keeping  their 
wages  down  are  interested  to  have  them  continue  to 
think  of  themselves  as  machines,  and  are  anxious  to 
have  their  ranks  kept  full  by  being  liberally  replenished 
by  thoughtless  and  aimless  immigrants. 

Another  point  that  I  want  to  make  is  that  there  is 
a  certain  magical  influence  attributed  to  college  expe¬ 
rience  that  does  not  belong  to  it  and  that  very  much 
of  what  the  college  affords  a  student  can  be  acquired 
just  as  well  out  of  college  as  in.  As  I  look  back  over 
our  four  years  of  college  I  realize  that  a  very  con¬ 
siderable  percentage  of  the  service  which  our  profes¬ 
sors  rendered  us  consisted  in  holding  us  to  our  work. 
They  buttressed  our  languid  determination.  By  know¬ 
ing  that  we  had  to  be  so  thoroughly  acquainted  with 
our  lessons  as  to  be  able  to  recite  them,  and  by  know¬ 
ing  that  a  record  of  the  quality  of  our  recitations  was 
being  kept  day  by  day  for  future  use,  we  were  arti¬ 
ficially  strained  to  the  point  of  respectable  industry. 
It  was  an  arrangement  designed  to  offset  the  human 
disposition  to  be  laggards.  If  I  had  had  the  disposition 
all  the  mathematics  which  I  acquired  in  college  I  could 
have  achieved  without  a  professor  as  well  as  with.  So 
of  all  that  I  learned  of  history  and  biography.  The 


214  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


best  work  in  Latin  that  I  ever  did  I  did  while  I  was 
a  dry-goods  clerk. 

This  does  not  mean  that  the  acquisitions  made  in 
college  will  not  be  better  made  in  college  than  when 
studying  by  one's  self.  It  means  that  the  average 
human  purpose  is  so  lacking  in  stability  that  it  requires 
to  be  supplemented  by  external  appliances,  and  that 
each  college  professor  discharges  a  large  part  of  his 
function  in  serving  as  just  such  an  appliance,  and  sav¬ 
ing  the  student  from  mediocrity  and  the  blight  that  is 
wrought  by  irresolution. 

Even  if  a  man  is  working  eight  hours  a  day  as  I 
was  when  I  was  selling  groceries  and  was  clerk  in  a 
dry-goods  store,  he  will  still  find  some  means  of  doing 
what  he  is  tremendously  determined  on  doing.  Eight 
hours  out  of  twenty-four  leaves  sixteen  hours  for  some¬ 
thing  else,  and  as  a  rule  the  less  time  a  man  has  for 
doing  nothing  in  particular,  the  better  off  he  is  and 
the  less  liable  to  arrest. 

And  all  of  this  without  underestimating  the  cultured 
value  of  mind’s  influence  upon  mind;  for  how  many 
are  there  of  those  who  bewail,  or  think  they  bewail, 
the  meagerness  of  their  opportunities,  who  realize  that 
through  a  system  of  free  libraries  are  made  accessible 
to  them  the  biggest  minds,  the  best  thoughts  and  the 
finest  sentiments,  human  and  divine,  with  which  history 
has  been  enriched  during  its  course  of  thirty-five  cen¬ 
turies.  An  open  library  is  a  published  university,  into 
which  any  one  can  enter  without  matriculation,  in 
which  he  can  continue  to  grow  wise  without  an  in¬ 
structor,  and  from  which  he  can  graduate  at  only 


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nominal  expense.  As  well  might  a  man,  standing  out 
in  the  midst  of  Western  prairies,  or  on  the  back  of 
the  Alps  or  the  Andes,  claim  to  be  the  victim  of  suf¬ 
focation,  as  lament  the  absence  of  opportunity  and 
the  poverty  of  privilege  in  the  midst  of  a  world  as 
full  of  splendid  impulse  as  the  sky  is  of  sunshine. 
Eyes  have  they  but  they  see  not.  Minds,  but  they 
think  not ;  souls,  but  they  breathe  not.  What  can  they 
who  have  some  vision,  do  more  to  open  eyes  that  are 
closed  than  to  quicken  aspirations  that  are  unawakened? 

Fundamental  sympathy  between  nations  will  hardly 
be  secured  by  mere  abstention  from  acts  of  hostility, 
or  by  the  adoption  of  an  economic  system  that  will 
bear  with  only  equal  pressure  upon  all  parties.  Two 
nations,  like  two  individuals,  may  be  sufficiently  com¬ 
panioned  to  render  unlikely  a  resort  to  arms  and  yet 
be  far  removed  from  relations  of  fraternity. 

15. 

THE  FELLOWSHIP  OF  NATIONS 

Although  it  may  be  a  long  time  before  the  nations 
of  the  world  become  an  organized  unity,  yet  we  have 
already  come  so  far  toward  it  and  entered  into  so  close 
relations  with  one  another,  that  no  nation  suffers  with¬ 
out  its  misfortune  reflecting  itself  in  the  condition  of 
the  remaining  nations.  There  results,  therefore,  a  kind 
of  enforced  international  brotherhood  to  this  extent, 
that  if  one  member  suffers  all  the  remaining  members 
suffer  with  it. 

We  may  not  be  proud  of  our  relationship  to  certain 


216  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


members  of  the  international  fraternity,  but  neverthe¬ 
less  we  cannot  escape  being  bound  under  their  burdens 
and  suffering  from  their  offenses. 

It  has  been  suggested  that  we  engross  ourselves  with 
the  interests  of  the  South  American  Republics,  and 
thus  provide  ourselves  with  all  those  commercial  facili¬ 
ties  and  opportunities  that  will  obviate  the  necessity  for 
our  existing  eastern  and  transpacific  connections:  “Let 
Europe  and  Asia  take  care  of  themselves  and  the  two 
Americas  constitute  a  close-communion  world  all  by 
themselves.” 

The  bald  statement  of  such  a  proposition  is  its  own 
refutation.  If  we  could  move  out  into  some  other 
sphere  like  Mars  or  Jupiter, — Jupiter  preferably  on 
account  of  its  tremendous  expanse  of  territory, — some 
such  scheme  might  be  worth  considering.  But  so  long 
as  we  have  one  sun  and  the  same  moon  and  only  one 
axis  of  diurnal  revolution,  we  cannot  ignore  the  divine 
intention  and  shall  have  to  stay  by  each  other,  nolens 
volens. 

Making  up  our  minds  to  an  uncomfortable  situation 
is  the  first  step  toward  adjusting  ourselves  to  it  and 
then  to  availing  of  the  advantages  that  it  may  be  pre¬ 
pared  to  afford  us.  And  certainly  it  would  be  great 
living  if  all  the  kingdoms  of  this  world  could,  to  such 
an  extent,  become  one,  that  each  individual  realm 
would  be  the  means  and  end  of  all  the  rest. 

Some  such  idea  really  lay  in  the  back  of  the  head 
of  all  (or  most)  of  those  who  have  met  in  conference 
at  Versailles,  Washington  and  Genoa,  and  still  earlier 
at  the  Hague.  As  animals  are  swayed  by  instinct,  so 


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humans  are  very  often  controlled  by  impulses  too  pro¬ 
found  for  them  to  be  able  altogether  to  appreciate. 
History  works  itself  out  along  invisible  as  well  as 
along  visible  lines.  One  cannot  study  history  without 
realizing  how  much  wiser  were  some  of  its  events  than 
were  the  human  authors  of  those  events.  We  are  born 
to  be  optimists,  a  disposition  that  is  likely  to  be  de¬ 
feated  only  by  some  derangement  of  the  physical  sys¬ 
tem.  Pessimism  is  a  mild  form  of  dementia. 

As  such  is  bound  to  be  the  world’s  destiny,  one  con¬ 
tribution  toward  such  an  issue  will  be  a  more  intimate 
acquaintance  with  the  world  in  its  foreign  and  remote 
parts,  with  its  people,  its  life  and  interests  and  its  his¬ 
tory.  By  travel,  commerce,  electricity  and  radio  the 
distant  is  being  made  very  close. 

Our  press  is  doing  less  than  an  intelligent  and  broad- 
spirited  press  might  and  ought  to  be  doing  in  the  way 
of  making  not  only  Europe,  but  South  America,  Asia 
and  Africa  familiar  to  the  minds  and  hearts  of  our 
people.  It  ought  to  tell  us  not  only  what  we  are  curi¬ 
ous  to  know,  but  some  things  that  we  are  indifferent 
to,  but  which  we  ought  in  the  interest  of  the  world’s 
progress,  to  be  familiar  with. 

Some  things  that  we  are  foolishly  and  abnormally 
desirous  of  knowing  would  make  the  newspaper  fuller 
by  being  omitted  and  space  be  thereby  afforded  for 
instructing  the  public  in  what  the  public  needs  to  know 
in  order  to  the  encouragement  of  a  better  civilization 
here  and  everywhere. 

Something  would  be  achieved  in  the  direction  of 
bringing  about  a  closer  relation  between  us  and  other 


218  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


people  if  the  press  would  tell  us  more  about  life  and 
how  it  is  lived  in  foreign  parts,  disclosing  not  only  the 
outer  features  of  human  existence,  but  its  more  inti¬ 
mate  qualities,  as  recorded  in  social  and  domestic  life, 
so  leading  us  to  realize  that  our  personal  differences 
are  not  to  be  estimated  by  our  geographical  distances. 
With  all  of  variation  that  there  is  from  our  own  meth¬ 
ods  and  manners  there  is  still  very  much  that  is  in 
common  with  our  own,  and  it  is  by  fostering  in  us  a 
sense  of  community  that  the  beginnings  are  made  of 
friendly  acquaintanceship. 

Still  farther  than  that  our  people  need  to  be  pleas¬ 
antly  introduced  to  that  underlying  basis  of  foreign 
life  which  is  stealthily  expressed  in  its  philosophical  and 
religious  ideas  and  aspirations.  Foreign  nations  may 
trade  together  but  commerce  is  not  a  conciliatory  bond. 
Trade  among  people  of  the  same  country  and  some¬ 
times  even  among  those  who  call  themselves  Christians, 
is  a  game  in  which  each  of  the  two  parties  engaged 
tries  to  get  the  better  of  the  other,  or  at  any  rate  aims 
not  to  be  outdone  by  the  other.  We  do  not  love  our 
grocer  or  our  butcher.  So  that  interchange  of  com¬ 
modities  cannot  be  relied  upon  as  efficient  preparation 
for  the  cementing  of  substantial  international  friend¬ 
ships.  By  such  means  there  is  secured  only  an  external 
approach,  not  internal  access. 

If  there  is  to  be  true  fellowship  between  dissimilar 
peoples,  it  must  be  on  the  basis  of  that  which  is  dear¬ 
est  to  us;  namely  our  philosophy  and  our  religion. 
There  is  not  involved  in  that  proposition  the  necessity 
for  accord  in  all  the  details  of  our  respective  systems 


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of  thought  and  of  piety,  but  accord  so  far  as  relates 
to  their  fundamental  element,  which,  upon  searching 
analysis,  may  be  found  to  be  identical  in  all.  I  sub¬ 
join  the  following  paragraph  recently  written  by  a 
Chinaman: — “Confucianism,  Buddhism  and  Christian¬ 
ity,  the  last  a  beautiful  product  of  Hellenism  and 
Hebraism,  each  in  its  own  way  appeals  to  what  is 
permanent  in  us,  and,  as  far  as  I  can  see,  there  is 
nothing  in  their  naked  simplicity  which  can  give  suf¬ 
ficient  cause  for  any  irreconcilability.  Personally  I 
have  become  convinced  that  a  true  Confucianist  is,  in 
the  bottom  of  his  heart,  also  a  true  Buddhist  and  a 
true  Christian,  and  that  the  reverse  is  also  true.  But 
if  we  are  not  prepared  to  go  as  far  as  that,  there  is 
little  doubt  that  they  can  at  least  be  devoted  com¬ 
panions.  It  is  here  that  we  find  the  key  to  a  genuine 
internationalism.” 

What  I  especially  prize  in  the  above  quotation  is  the 
writer’s  thought  that  true  international  fellowship  can 
be  secured  only  as  it  is  based  on  that  which  is  deepest 
in  the  thought  and  experience  of  the  combined  peoples. 


In  the  Scripture  estimate  of  what  is  involved  in  wife¬ 
hood  and  motherhood,  there  is  far  more  included  than 
is  contained  in  the  modern  exercise  of  those  two  rela¬ 
tions  ;  and  the  conviction  which  I  have  that  that  reduced 
estimate  has  an  unfortunately  close  bearing  upon  the 
tone  of  our  civilization  has  induced  the  preparation  of 
the  following  article  on 


220  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


16. 

MOTHER  AND  CHILD 

There  must  be  something  large  in  life’s  commence¬ 
ment  if  it  is  to  be  large  in  the  finish.  In  things  that 
live  the  end  never  gets  altogether  away  from  the  be¬ 
ginning.  Dimensions  will  change  with  the  progress 
of  time,  but  there  is  something  about  quality  that  is 
continuous.  Samuel,  who  was  perhaps  the  finest  speci¬ 
men  of  humanity  mentioned  in  Old  Testament  history, 
and  Jesus,  who  was  the  finest  specimen  of  humanity  in 
all  history,  were  already  holy  in  the  act  of  conception. 

Hannah  and  Mary  had  a  sanctified  longing  for  off¬ 
spring,  an  impulse  unconsciously  present  already  in 
the  two  infants  the  instant  they  commenced  to  be.  Un¬ 
sanctified  animal  impulse  cannot  vouch  for  quality.  In 
the  birth  of  neither  of  these  two  was  there  anything 
accidental.  Each  was  the  fulfillment  of  a  chastened 
desire,  a  hallowed  purpose. 

In  that  there  is  something  to  be  contemplated  by 
young  wives  in  the  prospect  of  a  conjugal  life.  Other¬ 
wise  the  bearing  of  children  reduces  very  nearly  to  the 
level  of  animal  breeding.  It  is  not  going  too  far  to 
claim  that  mothers  to  whom  maternity  means  all  that 
it  meant  to  Hannah,  can  be  regularly  expected  to  have 
children  that  are  after  the  model  of  Hannah’s  child. 
Something  of  this,  if  wisely  said,  might  be  delicately 
indicated  in  the  prayer  accompanying  the  marriage 
service.  It  would  give  a  meaning  and  add  a  dignity 
to  marriage  such  as  it  seems  in  these  days  to  be  sorely 
in  need  of  acquiring.  I  believe  that  the  Catholic  clergy 


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often  assume  a  liberty  in  this  matter  such  as  is  rarely 
exercised  by  Protestant  ministers.  We  are  not  cattle 
and  there  is  no  place  where  that  fact  ought  to  be  more 
distinctly  recognized  than  at  the  altar. 

Judging  from  appearances  the  average  parent  is  so 
materially  organized  as  to  ignore  life’s  spiritual  side, 
even  in  life’s  most  distinguished  crises;  and  yet  with¬ 
out  it  we  are  animals  and  ought  to  run  with  the  herd. 
As  already  said  we  cannot  get  away  from  beginnings. 
The  genius  of  the  oak  is  the  preserved  genius  that  was 
in  the  acorn.  The  last  tone  of  the  anthem  is  the  echo 
of  its  first  note. 

Maternity  carries  an  infinite  responsibility  and  that 
responsibility  dates  back  to  the  child’s  initial  moment, 
and,  as  in  the  instance  of  Hannah,  to  a  period  even 
prior  to  that  moment.  Women  are  evading  maternity; 
in  part  because  children  are  regarded  by  them  as  an 
incumbrance,  and  in  part  because  they  so  imperfectly 
interpret  the  import  of  their  own  constitution  as  to 
fail  of  finding  an  obligation  involved  in  that  consti¬ 
tution.  Women  may  pride  themselves  upon  their  ca¬ 
pacity  for  public  activities,  even  though  bringing  into 
the  world  with  them  no  unmistakable  indication  of 
such  capacity;  but  they  do  bring  into  the  world  with 
them  unmistakable  evidence  that  they  were  designed 
to  be  mothers,  and  by  exchanging  the  nursery  for  the 
rostrum  and  the  hustings  evince  a  sensitiveness  to  the 
call  of  their  own  ambition  which  they  deny  to  the  call 
of  nature,  which  is  the  voice  of  God;  for  every  phys¬ 
ical  function  is  a  divine  mandate. 

It  is  unfortunate  for  our  civilization  that  this  mis- 


222  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


interpretation  of  God’s  purpose  in  constituting  woman 
as  he  has,  is  practiced  so  widely  among  the  superior 
ranks  of  our  population;  but  it  is  perhaps  equally  un¬ 
fortunate  that  that  purpose  is  so  multitudinously  exe¬ 
cuted  among  the  inferior  ranks,  thus  rendering  the 
negligence  of  the  other  class  only  the  more  disastrous. 
Much  as  we  are  damaged  by  the  tremendous  influx 
of  indiscriminate  human  material  from  abroad,  the 
worst  feature  of  it  may  easily  be  the  exceptional  fecun¬ 
dity  of  that  material  and  the  free  scope  that  is  given 
to  it ;  so  that  in  proportion  to  its  numbers  it  contributes 
much  more  numerously  to  population  than  does  the 
element  of  cultivated  native  Americans;  in  that  way 
steadily  operating  to  depress  the  tone  of  national  life. 
It  is  only  a  problem  of  arithmetic  to  determine  what 
the  ultimate  issue  will  be  if  present  conditions  are 
indefinitely  continued. 

What  I  have  designated  as  life’s  commencement  is 
to  be  understood  as  extending  considerably  later  than 
the  prenatal  period  and  as  embracing  also  that  stadium 
of  life  in  which  the  foundations  of  character  are  laid, 
and  which  constitute  still  a  part  of  the  territory  sub¬ 
ject  only  to  maternal  control.  No  one  can  administer 
it  as  the  mother’s  substitute.  Except  in  cases  where 
there  are  insurmountable  obstacles,  for  a  mother  to 
sublet  her  responsibility  at  this  stage  of  the  game  is  a 
wicked  and  unnatural  evasion.  In  order  to  realize 
that  it  is  against  nature  she  need  only  inspect  the  cow- 
pen  and  the  sheepfold.  There  are  lessons  that  we  can 
learn  even  from  the  conduct  of  dumb  beasts.  They  live 
close  to  nature  and  do  not  replace  nature’s  laws  by  con- 


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ceits  suggested  by  convenience  or  by  new  inventions.  It 
is  the  mother-sheep  that  not  only  bears  the  lamb  but 
that  takes  care  of  the  lamb  after  its  birth.  To  do 
otherwise  would  be  to  decline  to  be  the  lamb’s  mother. 
There  are  in  these  days  very  many  motherless  children 
both  of  whose  parents  are  still  living. 

It  is  in  the  period  following  on  after  birth  that  are 
laid  what  I  have  called  the  foundations  of  character, 
and  during  which  only  the  mother  is  the  competent 
administrator.  It  is  to  the  mother  that  the  infant 
instinctively  clings  and  in  her  that  every  advantage  of 
influence  inheres.  To  thrust  the  little  dependent  upon 
a  hired  nurse  is  an  act  of  unnatural  disinheritance. 
This  unconscious  clinging  of  the  child  contains  in  it 
the  rudiments  of  affection,  an  affection  which  in  due 
course  generates  the  impulse  of  obedience;  so  that,  by 
the  law  of  nature,  out  of  the  warmth  of  the  maternal 
atmosphere  develops  the  twin  experience  of  love  and 
law,  the  surrender  of  the  heart  and  the  surrender  of 
the  will.  Those  two  surrenders  I  call  the  foundations 
of  character.  They  are  what,  as  they  are  duly  devel¬ 
oped,  compose  the  framework  of  fine  and  robust  man¬ 
hood  and  womanhood.  The  later  section  of  our  Bible 
devotes  itself  to  one ;  the  earlier  section  to  the  other. 
And  what  I  insist  upon  and  what  I  know  is,  that  no 
one  can  initiate  a  child  into  the  introductory  chapters 
of  that  lesson  like  a  good  mother.  Upon  that  point 
there  is  no  room  for  contradiction. 

In  character  building  as  in  other  forms  of  construc¬ 
tion  primary  consideration  has  to  be  given  to  funda¬ 
mentals.  Foundation  cannot  be  introduced  after  erec- 


224  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


tion  is  already  in  progress.  It  is  therefore  never  too 
early  to  cultivate  the  love  impulse  in  the  child  and  to 
inculcate  the  lesson  of  respect  for  authority.  Such 
lessons  are  never  so  well  conveyed  by  verbal  precept 
as  by  personal  influence  making  itself  inwardly  felt 
without  being  articulate.  Precepts  that  we  force  upon 
the  attention  of  a  child  usually  rebound.  We  can  have 
no  less  ambition  for  a  child  than  that  it  be  possessed 
of  a  loving  disposition,  and  a  yielding  nature,  so  that 
it  will  love  because  it  is  its  impulse  to  love,  and  obey 
because  it  possesses  the  genius  of  obedience.  When 
those  two  qualities  become  fundamental  to  the  child’s 
personal  character,  the  child  is  safe  and  has  become 
an  experimental  fulfillment  of  the  Gospel  and  the  Law. 

To  no  one  but  the  mother  does  that  become  quite 
capable  of  accomplishment.  She  is  the  only  one  that 
can  so  put  her  influence  at  the  very  first  stages  of 
young  development,  and  so  preoccupy  capacities  of  af¬ 
fection  and  loyalty  as  to  secure  mastery  there  before 
opposite  tendencies  have  had  opportunity  to  invade  the 
moral  domain.  In  that  way  by  moulding  the  child’s 
present  she  constructs  the  child’s  future,  and  by  fash¬ 
ioning  the  little  boy  or  girl  makes  the  man  and  woman. 

Any  woman  who  is  not  prepared  for  that  kind  and 
intensity  of  maternal  development  will  do  well  to  de¬ 
cline  the  overtures  of  wifehood.  She  will  serve  the 
world  better  by  not  placing  herself  in  a  position  likely 
to  increase  the  irresponsible  element  of  our  population 
and  to  add  to  the  number  of  those  who  come  up  with¬ 
out  being  brought  up.  I  have  no  sympathy  with  the 
hundreds  and  thousands  of  mothers  that  in  these  days 


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are  claiming  that  they  have  no  control  over  their  chil¬ 
dren.  The  thing  needed  is  not  control  over  their  chil¬ 
dren  but  the  early  establishment  in  the  children  of  those 
impulses  of  love  and  that  gentle  respect  for  authority 
that  will  operate  with  the  effect  of  an  interior  magis¬ 
tracy.  I  believe  that  there  is  no  kind  of  training  that 
comes  so  close  to  the  world’s  present  needs  as  that 
which  will  give  to  intending  wives  a  delicate  appre¬ 
ciation  of  the  entire  problem  of  motherhood,  its  respon¬ 
sibilities  and  its  opportunities,  and  the  relation  of  young 
culture  to  the  weal  or  woe  of  the  world. 

Life  is  a  precious  boon  and  that  there  are  so  many 
at  present  that  undervalue  it  and  that  even  purposely 
abbreviate  it,  is  an  unhappy  symptom  of  the  times. 
Most  of  us,  however,  love  life  and  are  hoping  to  con¬ 
tinue  to  a  ripe  age  and  after  this  life  to  go  on  living 
forever.  To  what  extent  its  continuance  is  subject  to 
our  own  determination  is  indicated  in  the  following 
article  on  yj 

THE  ART  OF  LONGEVITY 

The  above  title  must  not  be  construed  to  indicate 
that  duration  of  life  is  subject  to  individual  control 
except  within  narrow  limits.  The  basal  fact  upon 
which  we  have  to  proceed  is  that  the  term  of  each  man’s 
life  is  predetermined  by  the  constitution  which  he 
brings  with  him  into  the  world.  Solomon  seems  to 
have  understood  this  when  he  asked, — “Why  should 
a  man  die  before  his  time?”  There  is  a  point  this 
side  of  which  it  is  not  intended  that  a  man  should  die 
and  beyond  which  it  is  not  intended  that  he  should  live. 


226  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


Human  life  is  conditional  in  that  particular  very 
much  as  is  an  ordinary  time-piece.  One  clock  is  made 
to  run  twenty-four  hours.  Another  will  not  require 
to  be  wound  up  oftener  than  once  a  week  or  perhaps 
three  weeks.  It  depends  entirely  on  the  way  it  is  con¬ 
structed.  A  seven-day  clock  cannot  be  constrained  to 
run  three  weeks,  however  liberally  it  may  be  lubricated ; 
and  a  one-day  clock  can  be  confidently  depended  upon 
to  run  twenty-four  hours,  provided  its  works  are  not 
meddled  with  and  it  is  allowed  to  work  out  its  consti¬ 
tutional  destiny. 

(Since  this  article  was  originally  written,  Professor 
Pearl  of  Johns  Hopkins  University  has  made  similar 
use  of  the  clock  in  illustration  of  the  same  principle, 
that  the  term  of  human  life  is  already  prescribed  in 
the  physical  constitution  that  a  man  brings  with  him 
into  the  world.) 

In  the  case  of  the  clock  destiny  is  determined  by  the 
manufacturer.  It  is  settled  when  it  comes  out  of  the 
shop.  As  soon  as  it  makes  its  first  tick  the  question 
is  already  decided  how  many  more  ticks  it  will  make, 
assuming  of  course  that  it  is  given  the  chance  appro¬ 
priate  to  its  method  of  construction  and  that  its  inte¬ 
rior  mechanism  is  not  interfered  with.  So  that  “the 
art  of  longevity”  does  not  consist  in  a  scheme  for 
living  longer  than  we  are  constructed  to  live  but  in 
using  the  means  by  which  we  may  live  as  long  as  we 
were  constructed  to  live. 

In  the  case  of  the  child  heredity  occupies  the  place 
of  the  clock-maker.  In  that  the  child  plays  no  part. 
We  cannot  choose  our  parents.  It  is  matter  of  fore- 


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ordination.  We  are  entirely  in  the  hands  of  God  and 
our  ancestry  up  to  the  time  when  we  come  into  the 
exercise  of  free  agency.  And  even  when  that  period 
of  irresponsibility  is  passed  the  most  that  we  can  do 
is  to  allow  the  mechanism  of  life  unobstructed  oppor¬ 
tunity  to  work  itself  out  according  to  the  laws  of  its 
own  make. 

In  the  same  way  that  we  can  leave  the  clock  un¬ 
lubricated,  can  monkey  with  its  mechanical  adjust¬ 
ments,  expose  it  to  dust  that  will  encumber  its  bearings, 
so  in  a  considerable  variety  of  ways  we  can  embarrass 
the  natural  processes  of  life,  and  thus  defeat  life's 
constitutional  intention;  and  it  is  only  in  refraining 
from  the  infliction  of  such  embarrassments  that  con¬ 
sists  the  art  of  longevity.  But  with  whatever  punc¬ 
tilious  constancy  we  refrain  from  such  infliction  we 
shall  not  thereby  postpone  the  appointed  hour  of  our 
death. 

Barring  exceptions,  brutes  when  left  to  themselves, 
last  as  long  as  they  are  intended  to  last.  They  live  the 
natural  life,  unembarrassed  by  artificialities.  They 
exist  in  the  sunshine  and  breathe  nature’s  uncorrupted 
air.  Their  apparel  furnished  by  nature  offers  no  ob¬ 
struction  to  the  natural  processes  of  life.  Their  food 
is  only  that  which  is  adapted  to  their  physical  demands, 
untainted  by  unhygienic  delicacies.  They  eat  to  live, 
not  live  to  eat.  Their  drink  is  only  that  which  Adam 
and  Eve  had  prior  to  the  fall.  The  space  which  they 
occupy  is  sufficiently  ample  to  avoid  the  necessity  of 
crowding.  They  build  no  cities  but  confine  themselves 
to  the  country. 


228  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


While  in  a  state  of  nature  they  allow  themselves  all 
the  sleep  they  require  and  although  they  have  to  earn 
their  living  it  costs  them,  as  a  rule,  no  more  effort  and 
exercise  than  is  conducive  to  health,  and  have  sufficient 
time  remaining  for  rest  and  for  the  practice  of  such 
antics  as  meet  their  animal  demands. 

They  take  no  thought  for  the  morrow  and  do  not 
burden  themselves  with  the  expectation  of  adverse  con¬ 
ditions  that  have  not  yet  arrived  and  very  probably 
never  will.  In  that  and  some  other  respects,  they  reap 
the  advantage  of  their  stupidity.  We  pay  for  our 
superiority  to  the  brute  by  having  some  years  cut  off 
at  the  end  of  life.  The  further  we  get  away  from 
nature  the  shorter  tends  to  be  the  distance  between 
our  cradle  and  our  grave. 


There  will  always  be  progressives  and  conservatives. 
Every  complete  harness  contains  both  tugs  and  hold¬ 
backs.  The  sky  illustrates  the  balanced  play  of  cen- 
trifugence  and  centripetence.  My  own  tendency  of 
thought  is  set  forth  in  this  article  on 

18. 

INNOVATIONS 

The  presumption  is  always  in  favor  of  the  old  as 
against  the  new.  The  new  is  untried,  and  is  therefore 
necessarily  experimental.  Every  year  that  the  old  has 
been  in  force  is  a  separate  argument  for  its  validity. 
It  has  the  endorsement  of  the  thousands,  perhaps  hun¬ 
dreds  of  thousands  that  have  accepted  it  and  stood  by 
it.  It  requires  colossal  assurance  to  say  of  a  hundred 


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229 


thousand  or  a  million  people  that  they  are  cherishing 
a  wrong  conception  and  are  living  at  the  impulse  of  it. 

We  do  not  have  to  plead  for  the  old,  it  pleads  for 
itself.  The  new  can  in  that  particular  show  nothing 
for  itself  and  has  to  depend  entirely  upon  the  guar¬ 
antee  of  its  advocates.  So  that  in  the  first  instance 
it  is  the  advocates  that  require  to  be  interrogated  and 
investigated.  Like  any  other  witnesses  their  testimony 
will  be  worth  only  as  much  as  they  are  themselves 
worth. 

The  early  advocates  of  a  new  idea,  doctrine  or  phi¬ 
losophy,  will  certainly  come  from  the  class  of  the  light- 
minded  people  of  the  same  temper  as  the  Athenians 
that  St.  Paul  described  as  interested  only  in  hearing 
and  telling  some  new  thing.  The  readiness  with  which 
that  class  of  mind  espouses  novelty  is  to  be  explained 
by  the  fact  that  the  mental  feebleness  with  which  they 
have  grasped  previous  conceptions  makes  them  easy 
candidates  for  the  acceptance  of  almost  anything  that 
is  offered  them  in  its  place.  An  innovator  is  therefore 
certain  to  gather  about  him  a  quick  but  a  cheap  follow¬ 
ing,  and  to  create  so  immediate  and  strong  a  draft  as 
to  delude  and  bewitch  certain  more  competent  minds 
that  may  nevertheless  be  sensitive  to  the  argument  of 
numbers. 

There  are  two  classes  of  innovators,  of  which  one  is 
composed  of  those  who,  by  research  or  by  accident, 
bring  to  view  a  fact  or  principle  that  can  be  established 
by  objective  demonstration,  to  which  class  belong  such 
men  as  Galileo  and  Sir  Isaac  Newton. 

A  much  larger  class  is  made  up  of  those  who  work 


230  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


in  the  realm  of  idea,  rather  than  of  concrete  and  tan¬ 
gible  fact.  Truth,  of  course,  is  from  everlasting  and 
has  its  existence  in  the  being  of  God,  while  an  idea  is 
only  an  attempt  at  truth  and  comes  and  goes  with  the 
mind  that  develops  it.  That  in  every  right-angled  tri¬ 
angle  the  square  of  the  hypotenuse  is  equal  to  the 
sum  of  the  squares  of  the  other  two  sides  is  a  truth. 
It  was  a  truth  before  the  world  was  made.  A  mathe¬ 
matician  discovered  it.  No  mathematician  could  have 
invented  it.  Even  God  did  not  make  it.  It  inheres 
in  his  nature. 

Truth  then  is  not  what  we  dispute  about  but  at¬ 
tempts  at  truth  that  have  their  origin  only  in  the  human 
mind.  They  may  have  a  truth  underlying  them  or 
they  may  not.  Or  they  may  be  half  truth  and  half 
human  notion,  quite  unlike  the  mathematical  proposi¬ 
tion  just  mentioned.  Our  ideas  are  only  an  invention, 
not  a  discovery  and  bear  the  complexion  of  the  mind 
that  produces  them.  Tell  me  the  character  and  quality 
of  a  man  and  I  will  tell  you  the  type  of  his  philosophy 
and  theology.  It  is  like  plants  which  derive  their  nature 
from  the  nature  of  the  soil. 

The  only  possible  value  of  discussion, — and  ordi¬ 
narily  it  has  no  value  at  all, — is  that  it  acquaints  each 
of  the  disputants  with  his  opponent’s  views  and  gives 
him  opportunity  to  appropriate  them.  That  is  not  the 
usual  result  of  discussion,  however,  for  it  regularly 
ends  in  making  each  man  satisfied  with  his  own  opin¬ 
ion  and  more  antagonistic  to  the  opinion  which  he 
combats. 

A  large  class  of  innovators  is  composed  of  what  are 


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231 


known  as  free-thinkers,  by  which  term  we  may  under¬ 
stand  those  with  whom  absolute  truth  means  so  little 
that  one  person  is  allowed  to  have  the  same  right  to 
his  opinion  that  the  next  man  has  to  his,  regardless 
of  the  fact  that  no  man  has  a  right  to  an  opinion  that 
is  not  a  right  opinion;  and  unrestrained  by  the  con¬ 
sideration  that  we  are  no  more  justified  in  circulating 
questionable  opinions  than  we  are  in  passing  suspicious 
money.  Ideas  are  mental  currency  and  we  cheat  a 
person  to  whom  in  the  way  of  conversation  or  debate 
we  pass  an  opinion  that  has  not  been  minted,  and  im¬ 
pressed  with  the  authorized  stamp.  Each  man  is  free 
to  keep  in  his  pocket,  his  mental  pocket,  any  kind  of 
mental  currency  he  pleases  but  not  to  employ  it  in 
intellectual  traffic.  “Free  thought”  is  not  an  expres¬ 
sion  to  be  tolerated  among  reasonable  beings,  for  it  is 
equivalent  to  claiming  that  a  man’s  opinions  stand  to 
truth  in  no  relation  of  accountability. 

Novel  ideas  are  often  propounded  by  people  in  re¬ 
taliation  upon  some  accepted  opinion  that  crosses  the 
grain  of  their  own  prejudices;  in  the  same  spirit  and 
at  the  same  impulse  that  impels  a  bad  boy  to  disbe¬ 
lieve  in  corporeal  punishment  or  that  constrains  an  idle 
student  to  take  exception  to  a  strictly  constructed  cur¬ 
riculum.  Religious  creeds  are  more  indebted  to  preju¬ 
dice  and  to  preference  than  to  Scripture.  There  is  no 
confidence  to  be  placed  in  convictions,  religious  or 
otherwise,  except  to  the  degree  that  their  advocate  has 
been  able  to  count  himself  out  in  the  framing  of  them. 
The  boy  does  not  believe  in  corporeal  punishment  be¬ 
cause  he  has  no  taste  for  a  whipping.  The  father  does 


232  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


believe  in  it  because  his  days  of  being  whipped  are 
over. 


Perhaps  it  is  because  of  the  beauty  of  my  own  early 
surroundings  that  I  lay  so  heavy  emphasis  upon  the 
home.  But  at  any  rate  it  is  the  home,  the  family,  not 
the  individual,  that  is  the  unit  of  society.  The  indi¬ 
vidual  is  always  a  fraction.  Anything  or  anybody  that 
is  unattached  is  a  fraction.  So  that  it  is  justly  to  be 
urged  that 

19. 

NATIONAL  CHARACTER  IS  DEPENDENT  ON  DOMESTIC 

CHARACTER 

It  is  the  home,  not  the  individual,  that  is  the  ultimate 
unit  in  our  civilization.  Individuals  can  be  counted 
upon  if  the  homes  are  taken  care  of.  The  home  is  the 
one  original  institution  and  the  basis  of  everything 
that  makes  for  a  sound  collective  life,  and  is  consti¬ 
tuted  in  the  conjugal  union  of  one  man  and  one  woman. 
That  is  the  divine  order  of  things;  first,  a  healthy  con¬ 
jugal  basis  and  second,  concentrated  attention  devoted 
to  whatever  in  the  shape  of  boy  or  girl  develops  from 
that  basis.  This  covers  considerable  ground  but  is  sim¬ 
ply  stated  and  if  accepted  and  practiced,  guarantees  a 
normal  and  healthful  social  and  political  life. 

We  should  be  a  happy  and  successful  people  if  as 
much  care  were  expended  in  giving  things  a  good  start 
as  there  is  in  correcting  them  after  they  have  had  a 
bad  start.  One  has  only  to  consider  what  are  the 
humanitarian  lines  along  which  human  power  and 


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233 


money  power  are  being  invested  to  realize  how  much 
of  it  goes  to  the  undoing  of  what  has  been  done  faultily. 
The  public  is  administering  a  kind  of  varied  and  uni¬ 
versal  hospital  directed  to  a  hundred  species  of  curative 
enterprises.  Society  spends  its  time  getting  well.  It 
takes  but  a  moment  to  fall  down  and  six  months  for 
the  bones  to  knit  that  were  broken  by  falling  down. 
Repairs  get  in  the  way  of  construction. 

As  already  indicated  our  fundamental  concern  is 
with  the  conjugal  basis,— one  man  and  one  woman 
bound  to  each  other  in  ties  of  holy  matrimony.  I  am 
particular  to  call  it  holy  matrimony,  for  if  of  any 
other  kind,  it  makes  no  difference  by  what  formalities 
the  nuptial  tie  is  sealed.  Marriages  that  are  the  product 
of  animal  passions,  or  that  are  developed  from  finan¬ 
cial  or  social  considerations,  are  unholy,  and  made  no 
more  holy  by  being  countenanced  by  the  rites  of  the 
church.  The  town  clerk’s  license  and  clerical  benedic¬ 
tion  do  not  render  sound  that  which  is  inherently 
unsound;  and  the  increasing  frequency  with  which 
marriage  serves  as  the  necessary  preliminary  to  di¬ 
vorce,  makes  it  evident  that  matrimony  has  been  de¬ 
spoiled  of  considerable  of  that  sweet  solemnity  by 
which  it  was  characterized  in  days  gone  by. 

Nor  is  the  frequency  of  divorce,  in  itself  considered, 
the  most  ominous  feature  of  the  situation,  for  vastly 
more  marriages  hold  to  the  end  of  life  than  are  officially 
annulled  in  mid-life.  What  we  have  quite  as  much 
to  fear  is  the  tendency,  fostered  by  the  frequency  of 
divorce,  to  regard  all  marriages,  even  marriage  itself, 
as  a  commonplace  transaction,  a  social  amusement,  pos- 


234  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


sessed  of  only  the  same  degree  of  sacred  dignity  as 
any  other  business  arrangement.  Under  existing  con¬ 
ditions  all  of  that,  even  though  not  confessed,  can 
easily  find  a  hidden  place  in  the  minds  of  candidates 
even  when  standing  before  the  altar.  I  did  once  have 
what  amounted  to  such  confession,  made  by  a  bride 
who  had  just  covenanted  to  be  the  lifelong  helpmate 
of  her  chosen  spouse,  and  who  said  while  that  spouse 
was  settling  with  the  officiating  clergyman, — ‘‘This  is 
making  a  good  deal  of  fuss  about  a  small  matter,  isn’t 
it?”  I  would  have  divorced  them  on  the  spot  if  it 
had  lain  within  my  province,  for  divorce  was  sure  to 
eventuate  and  it  might  have  prevented  possible  children 
from  being  nurtured  by  an  unfit  mother. 

That  by  an  easy  transition  leads  to  what  I  stated  to 
be  the  second  part  of  our  matter,  namely,  concentrated 
attention  devoted  to  whatever  in  the  shape  of  boy  or 
girl  develops  from  the  conjugal  basis,  in  other  words 
the  maintenance  and  administration  of  a  home. 

The  word  home  involves  a  sentiment  which  does  not 
find  itself  in  the  German  word  “haus.”  We  gain  a 
suspicion  of  what  the  sentiment  is,  from  the  fact  that 
we  always  say  a  “boarding  house”  never  a  “boarding 
home”  “Apartment  house ”  not  an  apartment  home, 
for  the  true  home  is  not  a  caravansary  but  a  kind  of 
sanctuarv. 

j 

I  speak  from  personal  knowledge  of  what  a  true 
home  is,  for  I  grew  up  in  one.  Home,  as  I  knew  it, 
was  a  kind  of  nest,  the  place  where  I  expected  to  be 
unless  something  especial  called  and  held  me  elsewhere. 
My  parents  contributed  to  the  interests  and  well-being 


REFLECTIONS 


235 


of  the  children  but  did  so  especially  by  making  the 
home  itself  pleasant,  comfortable  and  healthful.  They 
treated  home  as  the  gardener  treats  his  blooming  little 
responsibilities,  in  that  he  spends  less  effort  on  the 
individual  plants  than  he  does  on  the  soil  they  root  in 
and  the  atmosphere  they  respire.  They  could  vouch 
for  the  children  if  they  could  succeed  in  making  home 
dear  to  them,  and  so  dear  that  after  the  parents  are 
gone  hence,  the  affection  of  the  children  would  still 
return  to  the  old  homestead. 

Mothers  are  saying  that  it  is  difficult  to  keep  their 
daughters  from  running  the  street.  When  I  was  a 
boy  I  used  to  have  to  look  after  the  cows  and  when 
they  had  gotten  the  grass  cropped  close  on  father’s 
land,  they  would  jump  the  fence  into  our  neighbor’s 
lot.  The  cows  were  not  to  blame;  the  girls  are  not  to 
blame.  It  is  due  to  scarcity  of  domestic  forage.  A 
mother  was  recently  asked  in  regard  to  her  daughter. 
She  replied  that  really  she  knew  very  little  about  her, 
she  was  herself  so  taxed  by  her  social  duties  and  her 
public  engagements  that  she  had  very  little  time  to  look 
after  her.  That  is  one  of  the  fruits  of  the  enfran¬ 
chisement  of  women!  I  think  that  in  course  of  time 
the  public  will  realize  that  the  recent  so-called  uplift 
of  woman  involved  rather  the  depression  of  her  own 
sex  and  the  impaired  advantage  of  society  as  a  whole. 

A  little  time  ago  while  in  the  barber’s  chair  I  fell 
to  talking  with  him  about  his  family  and  how  in  these 
difficult  days  he  got  along  with  his  children.  (By  the 
way,  there  is  a  good  deal  to  be  gathered  from  the 
common  sense  of  respectable  people  of  the  working 


236  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


class.  Their  intelligence  has  not  been  spoiled  by  over¬ 
refinement.)  “We  have  no  difficulty  with  our  chil¬ 
dren.  We  keep  them  off  the  streets  by  making  them 
contented  and  happy  at  home.  The  whole  family  often 
go  out  together  and  by  keeping  parents  and  children 
interested  in  each  other  and  giving  the  younger  mem¬ 
bers  pleasures  suited  to  them  without  having  to  go 
outside  after  them  we  are  saved  the  troubles  and  anx¬ 
ieties  that  so  many  parents  are  subject  to.” 

It  is  noticeable  from  this  story  that  the  father  feels 
that  he  and  his  wife  are  jointly  responsible  for  the 
children’s  loyalty  to  their  home.  Fathers  are  apt  to 
shirk  the  responsibility  and  to  claim  exemption  on  the 
ground  that  they  meet  the  extent  of  their  accounta¬ 
bility  by  earning  the  money  needed  for  meeting  house¬ 
hold  expenses.  Money  is  not  a  personal  asset.  It 
cannot  do  personal  work.  Particularly  as  the  children 
grow  the  father’s  personal  touch  is  indispensable.  A 
girl  and  especially  a  boy  who  has  not  experienced 
paternal  ministration  suffers  a  loss  from  which  after 
years  of  contact  with  the  male  sex  will  not  perfectly 
indemnify  him. 

Sprung  as  I  am  from  the  working  classes,  and  hav¬ 
ing  spent  my  earliest  years  upon  the  farm,  I  have  never 
ceased  to  feel  myself  sympathetically  identified  with 

20. 

THE  MEN  WHO  LABOR 

By  this  is  understood  the  men  who  work  with  their 
hands.  While  it  is  recognized  that  both  the  employing 


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237 


classes  and  the  laboring  classes  are  essential  to  the  best 
administration  of  the  public’s  interests,  it  is  to  the 
latter  of  the  two  that  the  place  of  secondary  dignity  is 
accorded,  notwithstanding  the  fact  that  if  either  of  the 
two  had  to  be  eliminated  it  is  the  laboring  class  that 
could  least  easily  be  dispensed  with. 

Civilization  begins  at  the  ground.  The  body  and 
what  the  body  can  do  is  life’s  primary  essential. 

“When  Adam  delved  and  Eve  span 
Where  was  then  the  gentleman?” 

Everything  rests  on  a  physical  basis.  Disturb  the 
relation  which  the  farming  community  sustains  to  the 
life  of  the  people  and  the  whole  fabric  of  society  is 
shaken.  Let  the  railroad  workers  of  the  country  go 
out  on  strike  and  we  experience  a  national  paralysis. 

While  the  importance  of  manual  labor  is  recog¬ 
nized, — has  to  be  recognized, — the  dignity  of  those 
who  render  it  is  not  recognized.  They  are  valued  not 
for  what  they  are,  but  for  the  amount  of  work  they 
will  turn  out.  Neither  intelligence  nor  personal  char¬ 
acter  counts,  except  so  far  as  it  conditions  the  amount 
and  quality  of  their  output.  In  that  respect  they  stand 
in  public  estimate  at  the  same  level  with  inanimate 
machines. 

It  is  well  understood  by  them  that  they  are  employed 
simply  because  no  machine  has  yet  been  invented  that 
will  do  their  work  as  well.  So  fast  as  such  machines 
have  been  devised  they  are  thrown  out  of  their  jobs. 
Of  course  that  creates  in  them  a  mortifying  conscious¬ 
ness  that  they  are  rated  simply  as  tools, — tools  em¬ 
ployed  by  capital  in  order  to  the  increase  of  capital.  A 


238  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


new  mechanical  invention  therefore  is  rated  according 
to  the  number  of  human  workers  it  can  displace. 

Those  are  facts  too  evidently  true  to  admit  of  ques¬ 
tion.  The  market  value  of  a  manual  laborer  is  calcu¬ 
lated  on  the  basis  of  how  much  he  contributes  to  the 
man  who  does  not  labor  with  his  hands,  perhaps  does 
not  labor  at  all.  The  value  inherent  in  the  man  himself 
because  of  his  intelligence  or  moral  character  does  not 
figure  in  the  calculation. 

When  it  is  a  question  of  how  much  a  man  is  worth 
it  is  instantly  understood  to  be  an  enquiry  as  to  the 
amount  of  his  holdings:  not  an  enquiry  as  to  the  value 
of  the  man  himself,  but  only  as  to  the  value  of  what 
he  possesses.  Weighed  in  the  scales  of  intelligence  and 
character  an  employe  may  have  double  the  worth  of 
his  employer;  but  in  industrialism  that  does  not  signify 
except  so  far  as  it  makes  of  the  fellow  a  more  profitable 
implement,  so  that  as  between  the  two  it  is  money  that 
is  the  determining  asset,  not  manhood ;  and  it  can  easily 
be  the  case  that  the  better  of  the  two  is  the  consciously 
humiliated  tool  of  the  worse  of  the  two. 

Such  a  situation  means  unrest  and  means  mischief: 
fruitful  in  peril  and  in  disaster,  till  the  employer  as 
distinctly  recognizes  the  value  of  his  employe  consid¬ 
ered  as  a  man,  as  he  does  his  pecuniary  value  considered 
as  a  human  machine.  The  problem  of  industrialism  is 
not  a  matter  of  legislation  nor  one  of  wages,  but  of  the 
reciprocal  respect  cherished  toward  one  another  by  the 
cooperant  parties.  And  the  higher  the  moral  and  in¬ 
tellectual  grade  of  the  employe  the  more  essential  is 
such  respect  to  the  maintenance  of  pacific  relations. 


REFLECTIONS 


239 


There  seems  to  be  another  common  feature  of  in¬ 
equity  in  the  relation  between  employer  and  employe 
which  consists  in  fixing  the  wage  of  the  employe  with¬ 
out  some  reference  to  the  amount  of  profits  earned  by 
the  company  to  which  he  renders  service.  If  profits 
are  out  of  proportion  to  wages  there  is  injustice  done 
either  to  employer  or  employe.  If  disproportion  is  in 
favor  of  the  laborer  then  his  compensation  involves 
injustice  to  the  corporation  or  employer.  If  the  dis¬ 
proportion  works  to  the  advantage  of  the  employer 
then  the  laborer  is  inadequately  compensated ;  for  he 
does  more  for  the  corporation  than  the  corporation 
does  for  him,  and  a  balance  is  still  due  him  after  his 
stipulated  wage  has  been  paid.  The  fact  that  it  is  op¬ 
tional  with  him  to  work  or  to  get  out  if  he  wants  to, 
does  not  touch  the  ethics  of  the  situation.  The  one 
question  to  settle  is  whether  he  is  paid  all  that  he  is 
worth  to  his  employer;  if  not  he  has  a  righteous  griev¬ 
ance  ;  and  if  he  is  housed  only  in  straightened  quarters 
he  contemplates  with  bitterness  of  spirit  the  palatial 
mansion  of  the  man  he  works  for,  who  will  venture  to 
say  that  his  bitterness  is  not  justified? 

That  there  is  nothing  absurd  in  my  contention  seems 
to  be  indicated  by  the  action  recently  taken  by  Mr. 
Henry  A.  Dix,  as  reported  in  the  New  York  Times 
issue  of  Thursday,  December  28th,  1922,  as  follows: 

“Mr.  Dix  at  the  age  of  seventy-two  has  turned  over 
his  long-established  million-dollar-a-year  business  to  his 
employes  without  getting  a  cent  from  them  in  exchange 
for  it.”  He  insists  that  he  is  not  “giving”  them  any¬ 
thing;  “that  he  had  prospered  through  the  faith  and 


240  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


honesty  and  diligence  of  his  workers  so  that  in  reality 
what  they  were  reaping  now  was  simply  a  just  reward.” 

Such  instances  have  hitherto  been  rare  and  been  con¬ 
sidered  as  not  only  remarkable  but  implying  on  the 
part  of  the  munificent  capitalist  a  surrender  to  his  em¬ 
ployes  that  was  unreasonable  and  almost  freakish.  It 
does  not  appear  however  that  such  an  act  is  anything 
more  than  the  rendering  of  a  quid  pro  quo  and  seems 
so  clearly  such  that  we  ought  to  expect  that  it  will  be¬ 
come  more  and  more  frequent  as  the  relation  between 
employer  and  employe  is  more  intelligently  and  justly 
appreciated. 


A  man  does  not  know  how  to  live  till  his  life  has 
been  already  lived,  and  then  it  is  too  late.  Two  of  the 
most  difficult  questions  requiring  to  be  solved  confront 
him  before  his  experience  is  sufficient  to  qualify  him  for 
their  solution.  One  of  them  is  the  question  of  a  wife; 
the  other 

21. 

THE  DETERMINATION  OF  HIS  LIFE  WORK 

Waste  of  resources  is  the  secret  of  poverty.  If  we 
are  poor  it  is  less  because  of  what  we  lack  than  because 
we  squander  or  misapply  that  which  we  possess. 

This  is  true  of  the  State  as  well  as  of  the  individual. 
The  State  is  a  reckless  squanderer.  It  squanders  its 
oil;  it  squanders  its  mines,  its  rivers  and  its  forests. 
Gifford  Pinchot,  an  authority  upon  Forestry,  asserts 
that  we  are  destroying  our  forests  four  times  as  fast  as 
we  are  reproducing  them.  Oil,  coal,  water  and  wood 


REFLECTIONS 


241 


are  the  four  fundamental  elements  of  our  material  ex¬ 
istence  as  a  nation. 

What  the  nation  is  doing  on  a  large  scale,  the  indi¬ 
vidual  does  in  his  smaller  way,  and  one  way  of  so  do¬ 
ing  is  to  fail  to  devote  himself  to  such  pursuit  as 
will  engage  his  entire  outfit  of  personal  resource,  physi¬ 
cal  and  mental,  leaving  no  element  unemployed  and  un¬ 
utilized.  This  is  a  matter  which  bears  directly  upon 
one’s  success  in  life,  but  which  never  occurred  to  me 
and  was  never  brought  to  my  attention  till  long  after  I 
had  fixed  upon  my  life  work.  Nor  do  I  believe  that 
it  is  often  taken  into  account  by  those  who  are  pros¬ 
pectively  shaping  their  career. 

The  practical  significance  of  the  principle  here  pro¬ 
posed  can  be  shown  by  a  simple  illustration.  If  a  man 
owns  stock  in  six  different  companies  but  cuts  off  and 
cashes  the  coupons  attached  to  only  one  of  the  six 
bonds,  he  is  practically  five  bonds  poorer  than  his  actual 
holdings  permit  him  to  be.  Hardly  would  any  one  be 
deliberately  so  indifferent  to  the  practical  value  of  his 
material  assets  as  to  practice  so  expensive  a  neglect; 
and  yet  there  is  a  class  of  values  where  the  commission 
of  a  similar  act  of  more  expensive  oversight  is  of  com¬ 
mon  occurrence,  almost  constant  occurrence. 

We  are  severally  made  up  of  faculties,  each  of  which 
can  be  exercised,  and  when  exercised  produces  some 
result;  and  when  two  or  more  of  them  are  made  to 
exercise  in  combination  there  will  be  produced  a  bigger 
and  a  richer  result;  and  the  greater  the  number  that 
work  cooperatively  the  larger  and  finer  will  be  the  out¬ 
come.  A  man  delivers  an  address.  We  will  say  that 


242  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


he  uses  only  his  brain.  The  intellectual  members  of  his 
audience  will  very  likely  be  satisfied,  but  a  considerable 
number  of  his  hearers  will  give  him  only  languid  at¬ 
tention.  Another  speaker,  equally  intelligent,  has  also 
a  heart  which  pulses  in  a  way  to  give  color  and  warmth 
to  his  words  and  the  sleepy  members  of  the  audience 
begin  to  wake  up.  It  is  the  same  address  as  before  but 
there  is  more  of  the  speaker  in  it.  But  it  may  be  car¬ 
ried  still  further  to  the  point  where  even  the  body  of 
the  speaker  becomes  involved,  and  the  man  instead  of 
standing  like  a  dummy  on  a  pedestal,  becomes  physi¬ 
cally  participant  in  the  harangue,  and  we  say  of  such  a 
speaker  that  he  puts  his  entire  self  into  it,  brain,  soul, 
and  physique ;  and  all  the  auditors  are  now  alert. 

Those  are  simply  illustrations  of  the  principle  that 
was  rudely  exemplified  in  coupon-cutting.  So  that  the 
normal  enquiry  to  be  raised  on  planning  for  the  future 
is,  What  form  of  activity  can  I  commit  myself  to  that 
will  involve  the  investment  of  the  largest  number  of 
my  potentialities  and  leave  the  smallest  possible  number 
unengaged?  It  is  because  we  fail  at  the  outset  to  raise 
and  answer  the  question, — What  is  the  service  into 
zuhich  I  can  come  most  nearly  to  the  patting  of  my  en¬ 
tire  self  that  so  large  a  percentage  of  actual  efficiency 
is  wasted  and  utterly  lost  to  the  world.  In  consequence 
of  which  we  become  disqualified  for  doing  justice  to 
ourselves  or  to  the  public.  We  cut  one  coupon  and 
waste  the  five. 

When  we  go  to  the  tailor  to  have  a  coat  made  the 
first  thing  he  does  is  to  take  our  measure.  It  is  quite 
a  serious  feature  of  coat  manufacture.  The  coat  will 


REFLECTIONS 


243 


prove  a  misfit  unless  all  the  eccentricities  of  bodily 
contour  are  taken  into  the  account.  All  who  are  par¬ 
ticular  to  secure  a  good  fit  insist  upon  a  garment  that  is 
custom-made,  not  ready-made.  The  service  with  which 
the  average  young  man  equips  himself  is  ready-made,  is 
chosen  and  put  on  with  no  nice  preliminary  attention 
being  paid  to  the  matter  of  adjustment,  so  that  he  sets 
out  in  life  with  the  attempt  to  do  what  is  imperfectly 
fitted  to  him  and  omits  undertaking  a  work  into  which 
he  might  have  thrown  himself  with  the  bulk  of  his 
powers  cordially  assenting,  and  guaranteeing  a  life  of 
large  and  bountiful  success. 

And  just  as  it  is  always  the  case  that  a  man  in  need 
of  a  coat  cannot  take  his  own  measure  as  well  as  the 
tailor,  so  it  is  that  others  will  often,  and  perhaps  usu¬ 
ally,  fit  us  to  our  proper  scheme  of  life  more  wisely 
than  we  can  ourselves.  Something  of  an  attempt  has 
already  been  made  to  handle  this  matter  scientifically. 
As  long  ago  as  1908  at  the  impulse  of  Mr.  Frank  Par¬ 
sons,  all  the  boys  of  his  acquaintance  who  were  soon 
to  graduate  from  the  elementary  schools  were  called 
together  with  a  view  to  considering  with  them  whether 
they  had  any  reasonable  plan  for  the  future.  This  was 
a  modest  beginning  but  resulted  in  opening  an  office 
in  which  all  Boston  boys  and  girls  upon  leaving  school 
had  an  opportunity  to  receive  suggestions  as  to  the 
selection  of  a  calling  best  adapted  to  their  several  apti¬ 
tudes.  The  matter  was  enthusiastically,  and  with  more 
scientific  exactitude,  taken  up  by  Hugo  Munsterberg, 
who  was  repeatedly  consulted  by  those  who  had  the 
appointing  power  in  different  lines  of  Industry,  and 


244  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


who  has  written  at  length  upon  the  subject  in  his  work 
entitled  “Psychology  and  Industrial  Efficiency.” 

Practical  results  would  certainly  be  accomplished  if 
some  qualified  person  could  be  officially  designated  to 
take  up  this  question  with  those  who  are  at  the  point 
of  graduating  from  our  high  schools  and  colleges.  For 
there  are  no  people  sunken  in  a  deeper  abysm  of  per¬ 
plexity  than  some  who  have  just  been  handed  their 
graduating  diploma,  and  who  by  miscalculating  their 
adaptations  and  entering  upon  a  course  of  service  to 
which  they  can  contribute  only  a  fraction  of  their 
efficiency,  do  themselves  an  injustice  and  confer  upon 
the  public  only  a  portion  of  the  benefit  to  which  the 
public  is  entitled. 


We  are  all  of  us  more  or  less  bad,  and  the  point  at 
which  the  badness  becomes  so  extreme  that  one  ought 
to  be  shut  up  or  hung  for  it  is  not  easily  determinable. 
There  is  always,  or  almost  always,  so  much  humanity 
mixed  with  our  inhumanity  that  we  cannot  readily  be 
sorted  into  two  distinct  classes. 

22. 

TREATING  CRIMINALS  AS  MORAL  INVALIDS 

There  are  some  ideas  regarding  criminals  and  the 
way  they  should  be  dealt  with,  which  are  so  consonant 
with  the  criminal’s  innate  humanness  that  there  is 
reason  to  believe  they  will  eventually  be  adopted  into 
practice.  There  is  no  immediate  promise  of  their  ac¬ 
ceptance  as  a  policy  of  action,  but  there  has  been,  during 


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the  past  half  century,  so  manifest  a  tendency  toward  a 
liberalized  attitude  in  matters  relating  to  law-breakers, 
that  it  affords  ground  for  hoping  and  even  expecting  a 
still  broader  latitude  in  a  not  too  distant  future.  All 
such  widening  of  policy, — the  cautious  introduction  of 
indeterminate  sentence,  for  example, — has  proceeded 
from  the  growing  suspicion  that  criminality  does  not 
withdraw  a  person  from  the  category  of  the  human. 
We  so  often  find  ourselves  wishing  that  we  could  break 
the  law  ourselves,  that  we  realize  the  fraternal  tie  that 
unites  us  with  the  man  who  does  break  it. 

My  conception  of  the  matter  does  not  intend  a 
greater  tolerance  of  crime,  but  rather  a  greater  intol¬ 
erance,  and  yet  at  the  same  time  a  sharper  discrimina¬ 
tion  between  a  crime  and  the  person  who  commits  it. 
The  question  lies  between  treating  the  criminal  by  a 
policy  that  is  predominantly  retributive  or  by  one  that 
is  distinctly  curative. 

A  criminal  is  a  man,  but  a  man  who  is  morally  ailing. 
A  man  who  is  physically  ailing  is  sent  to  the  hospital, 
not  with  a  view  to  punishing  him  because  he  is  sick, 
but  in  the  interest  of  his  recovery,  and  with  the  general 
understanding  that  he  will  remain  there  till  he  is  con¬ 
valescent  or  till  he  dies. 

An  experienced  ex-warden  states  that  in  a  recent 
year  nearly  half  a  million  prisoners  were  released  and 
that  sixty  per  cent  of  them  were  subsequently  sent  back. 
The  effect  of  having,  say  two  hundred  and  fifty 
thousand  criminals  running  loose  between  the  close  of 
their  first  incarceration  and  the  commencement  of  their 
second  is  something  fearful  to  contemplate.  It  is  like 


246  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


unchaining  a  plague  and  letting  it  run  its  course,  or  like 
catching  a  rabid  dog,  giving  him  a  severe  thrashing 
and  then  letting  him  loose.  For  in  the  case  of  the  two 
hundred  and  fifty  thousand,  just  mentioned,  each  was 
as  much  a  criminal  at  heart,  and  very  likely  in  conduct, 
during  the  time  of  his  release  as  during  his  in¬ 
carceration. 

When  a  patient  is  brought  to  the  hospital  and  it  is 
indicated  how  long  he  will  probably  be  obliged  to  re¬ 
main,  it  is  manifestly  unjust  to  him  to  retain  him  till 
that  time  if  he  has  previously  become  sufficiently  con¬ 
valescent  to  be  dismissed.  Equally  unjust  is  it  not  to 
retain  him  beyond  that  time  if  he  is  not  yet  sufficiently 
restored.  Whatever  in  other  respects  may  be  the  regu¬ 
lations  of  the  hospital  and  the  rigor  of  their  enforce¬ 
ment,  everything  as  to  longer  or  shorter  retention  under 
treatment  depends  upon  the  state  of  the  patient. 

Why  should  not  that  policy  be  applied  in  the  treat¬ 
ment  of  men  who  are  morally  ailing?  At  any  rate  ap¬ 
plied  in  principle  even  if  with  some  modifications?  If, 
as  said,  sixty  per  cent  of  released  prisoners  eventually 
return  to  prison  it  indicates  that  confinement  is  an  ex¬ 
ceedingly  feeble  deterrent.  The  advantage  of  hospital 
treatment  of  invalids  is  that  it  retains  the  patient  till  he 
is  cured  if  cure  is  possible.  To  release  him  prior  to 
such  result  is  to  undo  the  effects  of  treatment  and  to 
put  him  as  far  back  as  he  was  originally,  if  not  further. 
And  to  retain  him  after  he  is  cured  is  to  do  him  a  wrong 
and  to  deprive  the  public  of  the  use  of  his  services. 

I  believe  that  imprisonment  works  deterioration  un¬ 
less  the  prisoner  is  treated  as  possessed  of  honorable 


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possibilities  while  he  is  incarcerated,  and  retained  there 
till  the  evil  virus  is  eliminated;  and  no  longer.  He 
should  be  kept  at  work  and  paid  what  his  work  is 
worth,  with  proper  discount  for  expense  of  food  and 
lodging.  He  should  be  promoted  to  more  and  more 
profitable  line  of  employment  according  as  he  shows 
himself  qualified.  As  in  a  hospital  so  in  a  prison,  the 
real  character  of  the  place  should,  as  far  as  possible,  be 
disguised.  He  should  have  the  opportunity  and  the 
ameliorating  influence  of  contact  with  such  friends  as 
will  exert  upon  him  an  elevating  influence. 

To  decide  when  the  criminal  has  become  a  changed 
man  is  a  weighty  and  delicate  responsibility  which 
should  be  vested  in  men  of  keen  discernment  and  ex¬ 
alted  dignity  of  character,  neither  too  lenient  nor  too 
exacting  in  their  demands.  And  when  they  are  agreed 
that  one  is  abundantly  deserving  of  confidence  he 
should  be  treated  as  deserving  of  dismissal,  with  this 
qualification,  that  for  such  length  of  time  as  may  be 
determined  upon  he  should  be  classed  as  a  probationer. 

Such  a  scheme  will  considerably  lengthen  the  average 
term  of  confinement  of  the  less  desirable  class  of  crim¬ 
inals,  and  abbreviate  the  term  of  those  who  are  less 
objectionable.  It  will  make  imprisonment  a  means  of 
wholesome  moral  education  and  will  go  far  toward 
eliminating  the  retributive  feature  of  current  penology. 

Our  convicts  should  not  be  regarded  as  belonging  to 
a  distinct  genus.  We  need  to  remember  that  the  dis¬ 
tinction  between  recognized  convicts  and  a  very  con¬ 
siderable  class  that,  in  impulse  at  least,  lie  close  to  the 
dividing  line  is  not  sufficiently  broad  to  allow  of  a  clear 


248  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


and  radical  classification.  There  is  a  problematic  cast 
of  character  of  which  it  might  be  said  that  it  is  on  both 
sides  of  the  line. 

One  reason  why  the  modification  of  prison  methods 
has  proceeded  so  gradually  is  that  prisoners  are  the 
only  class  of  our  population  in  which  the  public  at  large 
takes  little  or  no  interest.  Once  they  pass  behind  bars 
we  count  them  out.  So  far  as  current  general  interest 
in  them  and  sympathy  with  them  are  concerned,  to  go 
to  jail  is  to  be  buried  alive, — in  sheer  indifference  to 
the  word  of  Scripture, — “Remember  them  that  are  in 
bonds  as  bound  with  them.” 


The  idea  regularly  instilled  into  the  mind  of  young 
people  is  that  concentration  is  the  measure  of  success, 
just  as  the  greatest  heat  is  secured  by  focussing  a  burn¬ 
ing  glass  upon  a  minute  point.  My  disbelief  in  that 
doctrine  and  the  reason  for  that  disbelief  I  have  under¬ 
taken  to  express  as  follows: — 

23. 

A  PRIMARY  AND  AN  AUXILIARY  LIFE’S  PURPOSE 

Man,  like  the  bird,  requires  to  be  double-pinioned  in 
order  to  wing  a  successful  flight.  He  needs,  in  order 
to  his  life’s  best  results,  to  sustain  himself  upon  the 
support  of  a  double  interest,  his  primary  purpose  and 
occupation  being  tempered  by  one  that  is  secondary. 
While  there  can,  of  course,  be  only  one  supreme  pur¬ 
pose,  yet  one  can  in  such  way  enslave  himself  to  that 


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purpose,  as  to  be  enfeebled  by  the  very  confinement 
and  intensity  of  his  self-expenditure. 

A  secondary  interest  affords  wholesome  relaxation 
from  the  strain  of  a  primary  interest.  Without  sus¬ 
pending  the  mind’s  activities  it  affords  mental  relief  by 
releasing  those  activities  and  letting  them  play  for  a 
time  in  another  field.  Change  in  such  case  means  re¬ 
freshment.  To  use  a  very  homely  illustration,  even  a 
horse  will  do  more  work  with  less  weariness  if  instead 
of  being  confined  to  a  single  trolley  line,  he  is  employed 
here  and  there  upon  the  open  road.  Monotony  robs 
even  the  noblest  of  service  of  some  of  its  zest.  When 
one  man  saws  wood  and  another  splits,  till  they  are 
tired,  they  can  change  about  and  go  on  working  without 
knowing  they  are  tired.  The  mind  is  exactly  like  the 
body  in  that  particular  and  can  do  double  work  by  ex¬ 
pending  itself  in  double  directions.  Life  is  short  and 
we  want  to  put  as  much  into  it  as  possible  but  not  at  the 
expense  of  an  overdrawn  physical  account. 

The  author  of  ‘‘The  Americanization  of  Edward 
Bok”  relates  that  when  a  boy  he  was  invited  to  break¬ 
fast  by  Oliver  Wendell  Holmes.  After  breakfast  the 
Doctor  took  him  into  his  carpenter  shop.  “This  shop,” 
he  said,  “is  my  medicine.  I  believe  that  every  man 
must  have  a  hobby  that  is  as  different  from  his  regular 
work  as  it  is  possible  to  be.  It  is  not  good  for  a  man 
to  work  all  the  time  at  one  thing.  Don’t  keep  always 
at  your  business.  It  makes  no  difference  how  much 
you  like  it.  The  more  you  like  it  the  more  dangerous 
it  is.  When  you  grow  up  you  will  understand  what 
I  mean  by  an  ‘outlet,’ — a  hobby,  that  is, — in  your  life 


250  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


and  it  must  be  so  different  from  your  regular  work 
that  it  will  take  your  thoughts  into  an  entirely  different 
direction/’ 

Every  relation  with  the  great  outside  world  into 
which  our  life  work  brings  us,  accomplishes  two  re¬ 
sults.  It  opens  the  way  by  which  we  can  put  upon  that 
world  the  touch  of  our  personal  influence.  That  is 
easily  understood  and  need  not  be  commented  upon. 
If  however  I  can  work  upon  the  world  through  more 
than  one  avenue  of  approach  and  can  do  it  without 
sacrificing  the  efficiency  of  my  main  ambition,  then  I 
am  doing  two  men’s  work;  and  not  only  that,  it  will 
enhance  and  dignify  the  influence  that  I  shall  exercise 
while  engaged  in  the  prosecution  of  my  primary 
purpose. 

For  example,  it  is  said  of  a  person  whose  entire  life 
is  undividedly  devoted  to  gain,  that  he  is  nothing  but  a 
money-maker.  He  may  do  an  honest  business  and  will 
probably  be  successful  in  it  if  he  gives  his  entire 
thought  to  it  and  leaves  all  other  interests  aside.  But 
honest  or  not  he  will  be  classed  simply  as  a  fortune- 
getter,  a  money  machine. 

Suppose,  however,  that  in  addition  to  qualifying 
himself  for  mercantile  pursuit  he  had  prepared  himself, 
as  a  subordinate  ambition,  to  adopt  some  collateral  in¬ 
terest  that  lay  outside  of  the  street  and  that  was 
definitely  human  in  its  scope.  He  would  then  never 
be  compromisingly  regarded  as  a  money-getter,  what¬ 
ever  might  be  the  amount  of  his  gains  in  dollars  and 
cents.  In  writing  that  I  have  had  definitely  in  mind 
some  prominent  men  of  affairs  in  New  York  whose 


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251 


character  and  place  in  public  regard  is  accurately  pic¬ 
tured  by  that  portrayal,  men  thoroughly  devoted  to 
business  but  with  an  auxiliary  regard  for  some  depart¬ 
ment  of  human  interest. 

Or  suppose  the  case  of  a  clergyman  who  knows 
nothing  and  thinks  of  nothing  but  what  is  immediately 
involved  in  his  clerical  profession.  An  outward  atti¬ 
tude  of  respect  will  be  maintained  toward  him,  but  the 
inward  attitude,  if  told  in  frank  English,  would  be:  “He 
is  nothing  but  a  minister.  All  he  knows  is  the  Bible 
and  the  catechism  and  all  he  can  do  is  to  preach;  too 
ethereal  to  be  made  available  for  service  on  terrestrial 
ground;  so  distanced  from  the  practicalities  of  life  as 
to  have  no  opinion  regarding  them  that  is  worth  con¬ 
sulting.” 

Then  again  we  cannot  have  a  valid  knowledge  of 
one  matter  except  as  that  knowledge  is  rectified  by  a 
knowledge  of  some  other  matter,  or  some  other  mat¬ 
ters,  the  more  the  better.  A  man  of  one  idea  can  never 
be  trusted.  All  truths  are  relative  to  each  other.  This 
is  so  perfectly  true  that  it  is  necessary  to  understand 
that  one  cannot  know  anything  perfectly  unless  one 
knows  all  things.  That  can  be  illustrated  on  a  small 
scale  by  saying  that  one  requires  to  be  acquainted  with 
a  number  of  other  sciences  in  order  to  be  a  geologist. 
Matters  link  into  each  other. 

Whatever  interest  one  commits  one’s  self  to,  pro¬ 
vided  it  be  an  interest  of  any  moment,  there  is  nothing 
whatsoever  that  one  can  know  that  will  not  in  some  way 
contribute  to  the  successful  prosecution  of  that  interest. 
One  leg  may  be  very  sound,  but  we  need  two  legs  in 


252  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


order  to  walk.  A  bird  may  have  one  healthy  wing,  but 
it  needs  a  second  in  order  to  be  able  to  fly.  Each  work¬ 
ing  alone  carries  the  bird  to  the  right  or  left  of  its  pur¬ 
posed  destination.  Working  together  each  rectifies  the 
inadequate  effects  of  the  other  and  the  two  operating  in 
combination  bring  the  bird  to  its  intended  point. 

Which  is  a  simple  way  of  presenting  the  matter  but 
illustrates  the  principle  which  ought  to  be  respected  by 
all  who  are  seeking  to  do  a  large  work  in  the  world, 
that  the  only  fit  that  will  serve  such  a  purpose  is  not 
only  an  intense  fit,  but  a  wide  and  various  fit  composed 
of  a  rich  diversity  of  qualification. 


It  is  necessary  to  draw  a  line  between  Meum  and 
Tuum,  but  the  mistake  comes  when  we  draw  too  black 
a  line.  When  the  people  of  Pittsfield,  Mass.,  inaugu¬ 
rated  the  system  of  village  improvement  they  did  well 
to  pull  down  the  fences  between  adjacent  lots,  yet  each 
householder  retained  the  deed  of  his  own  property. 
To  live  mutually  as  well  as  individually;  to  live  inter¬ 
nationally  as  well  as  nationally,  those  are  our  problems. 

24. 

OUR  INTERNATIONAL  FUTURE 

The  progress  of  event,  fostered  by  scientific  dis¬ 
covery,  by  commercial  interchange  and  by  condensation 
of  population,  has  brought  the  nations  of  the  world  into 
directness  of  relation  to  each  other  which  was  never 
deliberately  planned,  but  from  which,  now  that  it  has 
come,  can  never  be  receded  from. 


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The  time  is  past  when  any  people  can  live  ex¬ 
clusively  its  own  life.  So  far  as  we  are  ourselves  con¬ 
cerned  even  the  Atlantic  and  the  Pacific  do  not  qualify 
us  to  live  a  detached  existence.  We  have  become  a 
family  of  nations,  however  ill  adapted  and  incongruous 
its  members,  and  even  though  the  domestic  spirit  is 
more  the  product  of  external  pressure  than  of  internal 
impulse.  It  is  rather  an  artificial  adjustment  to  in¬ 
evitable  conditions,  for  the  world  has  only  two  hemi¬ 
spheres  and  there  is  no  globe  short  of  the  seven  planets 
into  which  we  can  either  retreat  ourselves  or  drive  in¬ 
compatible  neighbors.  It  was  a  serious  moment  in  the 
world’s  history  when  in  1492  the  Orient  commenced  to 
flow  over  into  the  Occident  and  the  last  refuge  for 
compressed  populations  began  to  be  availed  of.  The 
next  thing  beyond  California  is  China. 

Plagues  used  to  serve  the  purpose  of  escape-valve 
but  science  has  interfered  with  nature  and  defeated  its 
malicious  intentions.  The  wildness  of  Chinese  rivers 
does  something  every  year  to  relieve  the  pressure  of 
the  local  population,  but  President  Edmunds,  who  has 
spent  some  years  studying  local  conditions,  tells  us  that 
the  science  of  engineering  will  be  able  to  chain  the 
Yellow  River  and  make  it  a  means  of  furnishing  sus¬ 
tenance  to  the  people  instead  of  overwhelming  them  in 
annual  deluge. 

And  so  we  see  what  is  in  front  of  us.  We  cannot 
escape  each  other.  By  normal  process  of  death  we  shall 
be  individually  eliminated,  but  others  will  come  in  our 
place  and  more  and  more  of  them.  We  may  be  able 
eventually  to  communicate  with  Mars,  but  what  we 


254  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


have  already  achieved  in  the  way  of  elevated  railways 
contains  no  suggestion  of  a  mode  of  construction  that 
is  not  more  largely  composed  of  substructure  than  of 
superstructure.  We  may  be  able  sometime  to  make 
intelligible  signs  to  the  Martians  but  we  shall  never  go 
to  see  them,  and  shall  never  relieve  the  pressure  at 
home  by  colonizing  alongside  of  their  problematical 
“canals.” 

This  globe  is  destined  to  be  sometime  the  scene  of 
unspeakable  tragedy.  We  have  recently  had  four  years 
of  it,  due  in  part  to  the  crowded  condition  of  popula¬ 
tion.  One  shrinks  from  considering  too'  intently  the 
distant  years.  But  those  years  are  coming.  They  are 
certainly  on  the  way.  When  the  strain  becomes  over- 
severe  legislation  may  adopt  the  policy  of  Herod  and 
enact  the  slaughter  of  all  male  children  from  two  years 
old  and  upward,  or  make  it  a  capital  offense  to  live 
above  the  age  of  forty.  I  am  only  trying  to  make  the 
reader  realize  the  inevitable,  and  to  have  a  lively  sense 
of  one  aspect  of  the  social  problem. 

If  we  cannot  avert  tragedy  we  may  be  able  to  some 
extent  to  postpone  it.  The  world’s  population  will  be 
able  to  live  together  a  great  deal  longer  if  we  have  an 
abiding  sense  of  each  other  than  if  we  have  only  a  sense 
of  ourselves;  if  we  think  socially  than  if  we  think  only 
individually.  It  is  the  fraternal  sense  that  even  now 
keeps  people  from  devouring  each  other.  Under  the 
constraint  of  Christian  impulse  the  thought  of  each  man 
of  us  covers  also  the  next  man,  and  with  ever  dimin¬ 
ishing  warmth  and  intensity  broadens  itself  out  over 
our  neighbor  and  state.  We  are  able  with  some  degree 


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of  sympathy  to  think  and  feel  nationally.  That  is  as 
far  as  we  have  gone  yet,  and  not  all  have  gone  even 
that  far.  We  are  not  thinking  internationally.  Every¬ 
thing  outside  of  the  United  States  is  definitely  foreign, 
with  the  possible  exception  of  Canada,  for  a  Canadian 
is  almost  one  of  ns.  That  is  expressed  by  our  unforti¬ 
fied  Northern  frontier. 

When  we  look  from  an  object  that  is  close  by  to  one 
that  is  remote  the  eye  changes  its  focus.  When  we 
transfer  our  thought  from  our  own  country  to  France, 
for  example,  our  thought  changes  its  focus.  That  is 
to  say  that  we  think  of  it  nationally  but  not  interna¬ 
tionally.  Our  prime  conception  is  of  its  distinction 
from  us,  not  of  its  identification  with  us.  It  is  not  part 
of  our  world.  Our  interests  do  not  absorb  into  them¬ 
selves  its  interests.  In  order  to  think  of  France  and 
ourselves  one  thought  does  not  suffice  us,  does  not,  ex¬ 
cept  so  far  as  we  have  a  sense  of  French  interests  with¬ 
out  an  abated  sense  of  our  American  interests,  which  is 
what  I  understand  by  thinking  internationally,  think¬ 
ing  as  a  cosmopolitan,  thinking  as  one  whose  funda¬ 
mental  relation  is  with  the  world  rather  than  with  one’s 
own  particular  part  of  the  world.  It  is  simply  an  ex¬ 
tension  of  the  conception  that  a  true  American  has  that 
his  basal  obligation  is  to  the  United  States  rather  than 
to  any  one  single  State.  All  the  efforts  which  in  a 
rather  tardy  way  we  are  making  to  improve  conditions 
abroad  are  in  the  nature  of  internationalism  except  so 
far  as  they  are  put  forth  with  a  view  to  the  reflex  ad¬ 
vantage  that  may  thereby  accrue  to  ourselves.  Our 


256  MY  FORTY  YEARS  IN  NEW  YORK 


prime  belonging  is  to  the  world  and  our  belonging  to 
any  particular  portion  of  it  secondary  and  incidental. 
Our  Lord  was  the  only  perfect  exemplification  of  that 
principle  that  history  affords. 


THE  END 


Date  Due 

| 

PAplH 

“*v'r 

66 

immm 

r. 

fr  ,u“ 

\ 

PRINTED 

IN  U.  S.  A. 

